Operational Aims | addressing intellectual curiosity by inviting producers to listen to stories in accordance with future possibilities to be realised rather than that shaped by the authority of the past. Through this, it aims to break the boundaries between our thoughts and teachings.
Website | djharch.com/home/youngchoo-forum/
Hwang Doojin, director, Doojin Hwang architects × Bang Yukyung
Bang Yukyung (Bang): The Yongchoo Forum (hereinafter the Forum) is a place for interaction that has been perpetuated mainly by individual architects. How did the Forum begin, and what was its purpose?
Hwang Doojin (Hwang): In the summer of 2002, I moved to Tongui-dong, combining my home and office. After a hectic time in my life, it soon became autumn, and magnolia leaves were piled up in the garden. All of a sudden, I thought of Lee Hyoseok’s ‘burning fallen leaves’, and I felt strange because there was no ‘agony of a colonial intellect’ in the article published in 1938. It all started by gathering people, burning fallen leaves and roasting sweet potatoes together, inviting professor Ahn Changmo – a modern architecture researcher – and listening to his lecture on the architecture of that period. There was no special purpose for the Forum. Aren’t such gatherings usually held during extra-time?
Bang: How is it managed? What are the distinct features of the Forum in the areas of planning, casting, promotion, and hosting?
Hwang: We started to plan for it around October in the previous year. Together with Suyoung Hong, who is in charge and a member of company staff, we decided to reconcile the changes to the times and our interests. Promotion is conducted via posts on the company’s website, various SNS, and emails to previous participants. We pay extra attention to casting. As a general rule, we never contact anyone via phone. After researching potential instructors, we send all information (nature of gatherings, reasons for invitations, honorariums, etc.) that are required to decide whether to accept our invitations via email. It is to up to them to decide whether they are in the most comfortable state.
Bang: This year, it is celebrating its 19th year, running up to 100 sessions. What were the changes that took place in the Forum? What are its sustainable qualities?
Hwang: At first we covered various fields of interest other than architecture, but lately we have begun to focus on architecture again. Whether the subject is knowledge, projects, or arguments, the principle of listening to stories from the ‘creative producer’ has never changed. In particular, we think highly of upcoming practitioners who show a lot of potential through their creative activities. For instance, we prioritise a young architect who has just started a project over a film director who has already become globally famous. A realistic principle of managing it may be called, perhaps, ‘sustainable loss’. We try to maintain the balance according to the size of the company. We will continue, as long as intellectual curiosity persists and the loss is not excessive.
Bang: Who are the participants? How does such interaction with them influence each individual or the office as a whole?
Hwang: Each session has participants taken from various fields. We have never checked them over systematically, but we considered them to be people of great intellectual curiosity. Experience derived from planning the gatherings and knowledge acquired from the Forum have a great influence on our work. Interacting with ‘creative producers’ of various fields including architecture, history, military, economy, literature, art, and philosophy have helped us – as architects – on thinking and behaving. Interestingly, there isn’t much overlapping between the participants and the clients of the company.
Bang: What impact has the contactless environment had triggered by COVID-19?
Hwang: Since the beginning of this year, we have switched our activities online, and it has the merit of overcoming geographic constraints. However, since a sense of realism and immersion offline is also important, we plan to combine both online and offline in the long run. I believe that challenging the limitation of non-face-to-face communication is also an opportunity for new expansion, which is connected to the Forum’s frontier spirit.
TREVARI
Leader | Yoon Sooyoung
Period of Operation | Sep. 2015. - ongoing
Main Programme | 4-month-membership book club community
Website | trevari.co.kr
TREVARI is a reading club company whose motto is ‘make the world intelligent, draw people closer’. Founded in 2015 by CEO Yoon Sooyoung, a former employer of Daum, the company has grown into a huge organisation where – as of the May-August season – 81 club leaders are guiding 243 clubs. I first came into contact with the company as a building designer when TREVARI’s Ahngook clubhouse moved into the North Terrace, which was designed by our office, in Waryong-dong, Jongno-gu. Following that, the company opened another club entitled ‘Yes, the City!’.
Each season of TREVARI runs for four months. As a platform that encompasses subjects across various fields, it does not limit its scope to a certain field. It could be seen as a window into social communication in the architectural field, in that anyone can participate in the reading club on the subjects of architecture and the city. ‘Yes, the City!’ began in January 2018, and has now entered its 9th season. Inside TREVARI, as of September 2020, several clubs including ‘A City Walking with Books’ by architect Cho Jaewon and ‘A+U: Reading the City and Architecture’ by architect Maing Pilsoo have opened. Architect Kim Woosung also opened a club entitled ‘Designing Life’. In terms of a percentage, approximately 5% of all club leaders are architects.
If there is one principle that has so far been followed by ‘Yes, the City!’, it is professionalism. Just because the participants are laymen, there is no need to lower standards. Yongchoo Forum, which has been run by Hwang Doojin architects, has also maintained the same stance. Members of the reading club are people of considerable refinement. Together, they read not only Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Edward Glaeser’s Triumph of the City, Jun Jinsung’s Imaginary Athens, but also architectural classics including Vitruvius’ The Ten Books on Architecture, Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture, Seo Yugu’s Building a House in the Mountains and the Waters (translated by Ahn Daehoe), as well as regional studies such as Han Gwangya’s Standing in the City and Yeom Bokgyu’s The Origin of Seoul, Birth of Gyeongseong. Apart from this, there are also ongoing excursions to visit places related to the content of books.
The reason for continuing such activities is to attain a relationship of ‘bilateral reward’. First of all, as a person engaged in the field of architecture, it is a great pleasure to introduce books from our field to our readers. The next is high-quality feedback from readers. This is a great opportunity to see how the concepts and thoughts of the internal architectural world have been accepted and understood from the outside. For instance, through TREVARI, I learned that experiences of the city’s safety issues vary widely by gender and age. Architect Cho Jaewon stated that he was fascinated by the event of reading and discussing books on architecture as ‘one of systematic sagacity of the world’. Club leaders may supplement their professional opinions and knowledge, but their role is more close to that of facilitators. In other words, they ensure members maintain a well-managed discussion. Although I sense shortcomings every time, this is a great lesson from the reading club as well to realise the new potential offered by this role.
Hwang Doojin
Hwang Doojin is founder and director of Doojin Hwang architects, and the author of six books. He is interested in the historic narratives of Korean modern and contemporary architecture, geometry-based order and the urban mixed-use typology referred to as 'rainbow-cake’ architecture. He believes architecture should be a shared, freely accessible knowledge.
