[Critique] At the Boundary Between Architecture and City

Hyunjoon Yoo is an influential architect and writer already familiar to us for his insightful interpretations of cities and architecture in his books What Cities Live By (2015) and Where Do You Want To Live (2018). He analyses architecture and cities from a keen and creative perspective, connecting this analysis to wider social problems and presenting architectural and urban solutions to these problems. Of the many propositions raised in his books, his most well-known is the critical statement that ‘school is a prison’. In the architectural space, he searches for the reasons behind standardised thinking, difference, and unaccommodating social atmospheres. In his recent book Space Created by Space (2020), he analyses architecture using a cultural anthropological approach. This is very similar to the methods of Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), who tries to explain the branches of human civilisation using evolutionary theory, approaching human civilisation in its entirety from an environmental dimension, rather than approaching it through a more political historical lens. 

In his books on architecture and city, he stresses the importance of relationships and communication. Some of the urban solutions he has suggested for societies that have become more standardised, in which communication between age groups and generations gradually disappears, are as follows: the importance of small parks within the city, the density of events that stimulate changes in the city, and the communication and the interaction between various social stratum that take place on benches. His recent architectural works demonstrate his consideration of communication between people, the relationship between buildings and people, and the boundary between architecture and cities. 

JJJ: In-between Space as Cladding​

Buildings standardised in the language of modern architecture are made of concrete or glass, achieving completely opaque or transparent skins. Buildings with skins in which the decimal domain between 0 and 1 and the grey area between black and white has been removed, line up throughout the city. With growing awareness of this problem, interventions focused upon the opacity/transparency of the surface have emerged to establish alternatives to this style in modern architecture. Kuma Kengo advocates ‘weak architecture’ as his architectural motto, looking for an intermediate zone that contrasts with the stronger architectural impact of the transparent or opaque, that is to say, with modern architecture. In House N, Sou Fujimoto overlaps several perforated frames, creating an ambiguous area between the inside and the outside. The liminal space here created is the intermediate area between 0 and 1, the grey zone between black and white, the transitional space between the interior and the exterior, and a buffer between the city and its architecture.

JJJ can be read as an extension of this line of exploration. Yoo employs a toenmaru as one of the most significant indicators of this intermediate zone. He used the concept of the toenmaru in his previous project, cnf House, using terraces and perforated frames to experiment with the creation of liminal spaces between exterior/interior and city/architecture. In JJJ, an intermediate zone is devised through the terraces and louvers made of aluminum round bars. Moving and overlapping louvers mean the building’s façade appears to move like a flexible dress rather than a rigid surface. The German architectural theorist Gottfried Semper contended that the essence of architecture is not a structure but the atmosphere created by a surface. The connection between dressing and architecture as formulated by Semper derives from the effect JJJ’s louvers create across its surfaces. The façade made of louvers resembles traditional buildings with shades or shutters, and it also resembles a costume in which several layers overlap, creating a certain atmosphere. Old buildings in the alleyways of Europe often have small terraces; their windows open and close with wooden shutters; when the sun is out, pots are placed on the terraces, and the washing is often hung out on lines. Yoo said that he intended to recreate this vibrant urban scene in JJJ. When designing a house, the art nouveau architect Henry van de Velde personally specified every item of furniture, tableware, and attire, from clothing to slippers, to be used inside the house. It was based on the idea that every aspect of an environment must be controlled and completed by the architect. Yoo had the opposite idea: 70% of a building should be designed by the architect while the remaining 30% should be completed by the user. The 1.2m-wide terrace – the liminal space in which people can encounter each other, on the boundary between architecture and the city – was to be freely decorated and used according to the will and desires the users. 

The surface of JJJ relates to the issues of costume, cladding, the skin, and the body. The surface here is an incomplete and ambiguous boundary rather than a perfect or clearly defined one, an interface that allows for encounters between the interior and exterior, and architecture and the city. If modern architecture focused its attentions on the surface of an inanimate object, the surface pursued by contemporary architecture is the skin of a living organism.

ⓒPark Youngchae ​

The Hug: The Composition of Diagonal Spaces and Open Skin

In his book What Cities Live By, Yoo makes a comparison between Buddhist temples and churches. A Buddhist temple has an outdoor space and eaves, allowing people to casually approach the site, whereas a church is mainly composed of an interior space, meaning those that are not members of the congregation must muster themselves to open the door and enter. He points out that churches, which emphasise the importance of missionary work, are rather closed in terms of architectural aspects. From the outside, The Hug is designed in a way so that it is barely recognisable as a church: there is no pointed steeple or protruding cross. The client wanted to build a church that would embrace all, welcoming non￾religious people into the church and placing no demands upon them. Passersby can trace the inwardly curving wall, approach the building at a gentle pace, and walk along the inside of the open wall. Generally, the ceiling surface of the vault or dome bends inward, embracing those within its scope. Similarly, the inwardly curving wall communicates a sense of embracing people, drawing them into the church.

Yoo has made every attempt to delineate the boundary between the city and the building in a gradual rather than radical way. As people enter the church through the curved walls, they, in turn, access the outdoor space (pathway), semi-outdoor space (communion square), open-interior space (café), and interior space (chapel). Rather than accessing the interior directly by opening a door from the outside, which is an extreme shift from white to black, Yoo employs a gradual shift in form by introducing a grey transitional space or liminal space.

The corners of The Hug are left open without becoming enclosed within a box form. The corner is significant to Yoo, because it is where streets – where the building and the city meet – cross and encounter each other. In his Munjungdong Officetels project, he designed a city square by opening up the corners of the building’s ground floor. In Private D House, he used the method of creating windows for the house at the corners. In The Hug, he opened up the corners by distancing the gaps between two plates. What’s interesting is that, in the initial designs of this church suggested by the architect, the four sides were planned as independent forms, akin to the Exeter Library of Louis Kahn. Kahn follows the beaux-art tradition of dividing the room (pièce), but, by opening up the corners and arranging the circulation diagonally, he imbued his building with a dynamic and open sense of movement that cannot be found in classical buildings. Yoo applied this method in The Hug. In the plan, the building appears to be rectangular, but the spaces have been displaced diagonally. The stairs on the ground floor are designed in the shape of a triangle, with consideration given to access from the corners and longitudinal sides. On the upper levels, these corner spaces become empty, and the interior space is designed to open towards the corners, making people unaware of the fact that the building is in a box shape. The practice of opening up corners and creating an independent façade was explored by members of De Stijl, Le Corbusier, and Richard Meier. The spatial layout of the main chapel in The Hug is also in a rhombus shape. Therefore, the open space at the corners and the altar space of the chapel are connected, promoting a dynamic movement in diagonal directions. If, as in the initial design, the two elevations on the chapel were separated from the mass – eventually opening up all four corners – this sense of openness and dynamism would have been further enhanced. 

On the front of The Hug, a cross has been formed as a void in the middle of pixel-shaped panels. As Yoo states, this was devised in homage to the void cross of Ando Tadao’s Church of the Light. These panels are also reminiscent of the floating panels in the MIT Chapel, where Yoo studied. Metal panels make a sound as they sway in the wind, and this sound of metal clinking can be connected to spiritual phenomena and religious rituals. The technique of creating a whole by repeating a small single unit has also been used in the metal panels of the void cross and the concrete grid used for the outwardly-open window. These two designs take shape in the repetition of same sized units, but void and solid spaces have been inverted with precision.

It is said that Wolfsburg Church by Alvar Aalto and MIT Chapel by Eero Saarinen were the key references when designing the main interior space of the main chapel. The slightly asymmetrical seating arrangement and the upper walls built with vertical members to enhance acoustics are comparable to Aalto’s Wolfsburg Church, and the small stones on the walls recall the brick walls of Saarinen’s Chapel. The small stones that form the wall of The Hug are lied up at a 45-degree angle to the wall, casting different shadows over time as natural light descends from above. Yoo wanted the main chapel to feel like an outdoor space, as described in the Gospels with the scene of Jesus reaching. Facing the altar positioned at the corner, the seating arrangement makes the priest feel like a more friendly figure, rather than an authoritative one, as well as encouraging fellowship by allowing believers to look at each other.

Wind Fence: Fragmented Masses and Wavy Elevation

In the early twentieth-century, modernism presented the simple, vast mass as the image of the future, distinct from the architectural forms of past. However, in the late twentieth-century, this modernist monolithic way of thinking began to be scrutinised, and many architects attempted to create a whole through the accrual of small units rather than the construction of an immense monolith. Aldo van Eyck (Amsterdam Orphanage) and Candilis-Josic-Woods (Plan for Frankfurt, The Free University of Berlin) marked the starting point of this new direction, and more recently, Sou Fujimoto (Children’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation) and Nishizawa Ryue (Moriyama House, Towada Art Center) have tried to scatter small units across their structures in an atypical way. This attempt to overcome modernist principles and theory is similar to the shift in direction of our society, from totalitarian and authoritarian to individualistic and autonomous.

The Smurf Village School, proposed by Yoo as in direct contrast to the statement of a ‘school is a prison’ can be seen as an extension to these attempts, while Wind Fence can also be interpreted as another attempt. The initial design of Wind Fence was as a single mass. During the process of developing the design, as the city’s alleyways were brought into the building, the mass became fragmented and scattered across several masses, eventually transforming into its current layout. If it consisted of a single mass, the sea view enjoyed by the village to the back of the building would have been blocked, and the path to the village would have been cut off. As Yoo notes, the different masses of Wind Fence, like that of Nishizawa Ryue’s Moriyama House, can occupy a large area for singular use or reduce their overall size based on requirements. It is a flexible composition in which the order of its parts does not affect the whole. Wind Fence observes the idea of a path, of major interest to Yoo. The path from the village penetrates the fragmented masses, allowing visitors to feel as if they are strolling the alleyways of the city. As Yoo explained, the exposed staircases on the outside of the building are extended paths. One can reach the terrace by using the stairs and access the interior spaces on the other levels. The path leading from the village continues along the path between the masses, extending to the terrace and opening out to the sea. 

Another striking feature of Wind Fence is the wave-shaped elevation that is separate from the more fragmented masses. This approach to separating the elevation from the building and the façade from the programme was previously attempted by Robert Venturi. As with a building located on the outskirts of a city in the United States, set behind an immense signboard as elevation, there is separation between the building and the sign read from the outside, guided by their respective autonomy. Another origin of the separated façade can be cited in a design development from De Stijl that leads to Le Corbusier and The New York Five, including Richard Meier. The client wanted this building to be easily recognisable and viewed as a grand when seen from a distance. As a response to this request, Wind Fence corresponds with the shapes and scales of neighbouring buildings facing the direction of the village, and the shape and the scale of the sea facing the direction of the sea. When approaching the site, the concave surface draws people in, while the convex surface pushes people out. Also, since there are windows in the middle of the elevation, a diverse atmosphere is noted when sitting in different corners of the terraces adjacent to the elevation. Yoo intended to create the effect of a frame when looking out from the inside of the hanok.

Only the first phase of Wind Fence has been completed, and facilities including the client’s house will be added later on the eastern side of the site. Once the fragmented masses – where the alleyways penetrate – and the wave-shaped, extended elevation surround the building by following a similar concept, the architect’s intention to design an urban composition and symbolic elevation will become more explicit. In his book, Yoo predicts what might come to pass in the era after Coronavirus Disease-19, anticipating significant changes to the way that we organise social contract between cities and architecture. Attempts to overcome the dictates of modernism have restored the deeply felt connection between traditional pathways and smaller structures, reanimated the transitional space between black and white, and bolstered the architecturally implemented effort of creating façades—where layers overlap. As such, the new liminal space is neither interior nor exterior. The work of architect Hyunjoon Yoo is the culmination of practical experience of and insights into architectural, urban, and social relations. Note what new perspectives he will reveal to our changing contemporary moment, and how they will be materialised and fulfilled. These prospects propel a new adventure, which he unfolds on the boundary between architecture and the city​.