SPACE November 2025 (No. 696)
Decomposition Farm_Stairway (2022) was an experimental pavilion combining construction waste – particularly styrofoam, which takes 500 years to decompose – with industrial robotics and a mealworm ecology. Within the structure, thermally cut by a robotic arm, mealworms consumed styrofoam and produced harmless excreta that became a growth base for moss and plants, forming a system where the artificial and the natural coexisted in a cycle. However, the necessity of purchasing new styrofoam for fabrication, contrary to the original intentions, revealed a major limitation of the project. To address this issue, a subsequent experiment titled Strata of Decomposition (2025) was initiated.
*You can see more information on the SPACE No. November (2025).
Yong Ju Lee is an architect who pursues experimentation across all layers of space. His works, spanning diverse scales and media, seek to provoke and inspire everyday life. He has exhibited at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and the Venice Biennale, and received the Korea Public Architecture Award, iF Design Award, and Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard. He studied architecture at Yonsei University and Columbia University, and is currently an assistant professor at Seoul National University of Science and Technology, leading the Robotic Fabrication Studio. He published Constructing Thought (2024).
