SPACE-[I AM AN ARCHITECT] FROM THE CLOSEST MIND: KIM HANJOONG

ʻI am an Architectʼ was planned to meet young architects who seek their own architecture in a variety of materials and methods. What do they like, explore, and worry about? SPACE is going to discover individual characteristics of them rather than group them into a single category. The relay interview continues when the architect who participated in the conversation calls another architect in the next turn.

interview Kim Hanjoong principal, ground architects × Kim Yeram

Working Under Two Names

Kim Yeram: I wonder what prompted you to break away from your previous projects?

Kim Hanjoong: My first job was at Baum Architects. As it was a big company, construction usually took a significant period of time, and it made me eager to see things to their completion. This desire prompted me to learn wood craft and begin to make silkscreen prints.

Kim Yeram: You co-founded fig. architects in 2015, and another studio two years afterwards.

Kim Hanjoong: The winners of the SPACE Prize for International Students of Architectural Design in 2007, all three of us, established a firm under the name of fig.architects, but it became more and more difficult to synchronise our opinions. It is tricky when there are three principals, and so I founded my own studio named basement workshop.

Kim Yeram: Basement worskshop and ground architects are listed together on your website—how do these two work in tandem?

Kim Hanjoong: Private commissions fall under the purview of basement workshop, while the more public projects go to ground architects. That said, there remains a blurred line between them. I am sure things will find their balance over time.

Stories Embedded Everywhere

Kim Yeram: Café Travertine (2018) where we are at is a renovation project that transformed two houses into a commercial space. What was the condition of the buildings at the time?

Kim Hanjoong: The client wanted to turn a hanok into a café, so we rented this space, but as you can see, it doesnʼt look like much like a hanok, does it? (laugh) I was puzzled, so I looked it up in the records. It turns out it was part of the building that suffered fire damage in 2000.

Kim Yeram: There are many moments in this place that reveal discrepancies between the reality and the drafted records, influencing this café located near the Yongsan station.

Kim Hanjoong: Baton meal café (2020) is supposed to be a house in the drawings, but when we demolished it only steel columns the size of a palm tree and several wood boards remained. It was more

like an attractive tent than a house!

Kim Yeram: What elements did you pay greatest attention to so as to turn the old building into a café?

Kim Hanjoong: At the time, I thought that the café was not attractive without outdoor spaces. That was probably because I spent quite a lot of time at Anthracite Seogyo. (laugh) Travertine was blocked off from the street at the front as a consequence of the wall, so I tore this down and inserted a small mass to create a semi-outdoor space.

Kim Yeram: There is a long iron gate at the entrance. I guess this was introduced to prevent entry after operational hours?

Kim Hanjoong: It was the idea of the director Lee Kyuhong who ran a concept store Reelee Store adjacent to Café Travertine. Merchants in Seomun Market in Daegu install these accordion-looking iron gates in front of their stores. They can switch modes whenever needed, and maintain privacy at the same time.

Kim Yeram: I heard that you applied detailing inspired by Mies Van der Rohe in this place?

Kim Hanjoong: There are marble stones in the Barcelona Pavilion. The body of its frame is make from marble slate but a chunk of stone is used to finish the sides. Many architects, in fact, are struggling with detailing; I chose to carve the material to 45 degrees on the side, but leave 2 – 3 mm extra at the joint. I hated this disjunction. However, I found a chunk of stone in the design by Mies, which was a Eureka moment. That is why Café Travertine is finished with 30mm marble slices and 100mm marble stone.

Kim Yeram: We finished our coffee, shall we move onto the next place?

Kim Hanjoong: Shall we?

I Also Have a Neat Personality

Kim Yeram: You carry a lot of keys.

Kim Hanjoong: As I live in an old house, and use an older property as my office, I happen to carry a lot of them. It keeps me from automation! (laugh)

Kim Yeram: You are clearly fascinated by old things; you posted on social media recently that you want a vintage bike.

Kim Hanjoong: Yes, but I canʼt ride one because of my wife and baby. So instead, I alternate between my 1997 Volkswagen Golf Mk3 parked over there and BMW3.

Kim Yeram: We have already arrived at the Butter Rice Club (2021). It is much closer than expected!

Kim Hanjoong: I collaborated with one two chachacha on this project. I gave the dimensions of the tables to the designer Kwon Euyhyun, and I asked him to install lights on the tables.

Kim Yeram: It is one of the selling points of the space, making photos of the meals look good.

Kim Hanjoong: Yes, it is. An image looks better in such an environment, which, although outside the expertise of architecture, it is a design challenge to make spaces present well in photographs.

Kim Yeram: These red chairs are from Vitra.

Kim Hanjoong: In projects for foreign corporations, the demolition team sometimes collect good quality branded furniture from those discarded at the construction site, but this only ever happens out of luck. The Panton Chair by Vitra placed in the Butter Rice Club was found in a truck during lunch break. I took it from there as couldnʼt believe it was real. (laugh) The kitchen table paired with this chair is also by Vitra and this also came to us out of the blue. I put a board on top of its legs.

Kim Yeram: It is leveled between the table’s location and the entrance. Is there any special reason for this?

Kim Hanjoong: I wanted to level the restaurant floor and the entrance. Thatʼs why I raised the indoor flooring and chose to install the electric wiring and plumbing beneath.

Kim Yeram: Then there is the glass mass, as found in the Baton meal café.

Kim Hanjoong: Yes, in a way it does. It comes to us as a cliché, but the effect of the glass mass is still interesting, so we continue to explore this medium.

Café Travertine (2018)

I Want to Make Ordinary Things Extraordinary

Kim Yeram: Shall we go this way? Wow, there are a lot of people at Approach Coffee (2021) today.

Kim hanjoong: Yes, it is always full. Now we enter the courtyard through a low ceiling passageway, but it was originally connected to the building through a set of narrow steps. We wanted to make it more dramatic, so we fixed it to adopt this position.

Kim Yeram: I feel like I am in the suburbs because of the courtyard.

Kim Hanjoong: When I kicked off the project, I admired the fact that the courtyard was surrounded by trees. So, I wanted to preserve this sense of being closer to nature, and I asked the lab who was in charge of landscape design so as to install a waterway to create water noise.

Kim Yeram: The radiant staircase that shows the way is beautiful.

Kim Hanjoong: This staircase wasnʼt in the existing building. In order to harmonise with the original building, it had to express some recognition of time and history, but it appeared so new and untouched that I brought in a professional engineer to work on it. It was difficult to complete because people who do this kind of work are so rare that I can count them on one hand!

Kim Yeram: What is this space next to the entrance intended for?

Kim Hanjoong: By stacking cement bricks, I shifted the terrace indoors, and introduced a vertical slit window in the wall. I personally refrain from using so-called ʻgoodʼ materials that are seemingly universally approved. I find joy in employing material that have depreciated in a better and more successful way. (laugh)

Approach Coffee (2021)

Kim Hanjoong who are having a conversation with editor

Why Don’t You Come to My Library?

Kim Yeram: The office is near Hyochang Park. How many employees do you have?

Kim Hanjoong: There are three colleagues now. It would be good to take on interns, but we donʼt have enough seats. It is a small space. It might be good for us to mingle with others, but we are not presently able to accommodate more people.

Kim Yeream: The view from the meeting room is awesome.

Kim Hanjoong: I used to work in there, but we have separated the meeting room from the design space, so we use the back room as our workspace.

Kim Yeram: I understand you are about to open a small library next to your office?

Kim Hanjoong: I signed the contract as soon as the office next door was on sale. For a long time, I thought this place was such a good and productive spot for reading, so I established a library with a friend.

Kim Yeram: How do you divide the roles?

Kim Hanjoong: My friend curates the Korean literature and poetry collections, and I create the space. I donʼt prevent him from buying all the books. (laugh) We plan to run the space as a membership-based library of about 2,000 books, but it will probably open around the time the magazine is published.

Kim Yeram: I assume more people will begin to visit as there is a new QUEENMAMA MARKET opening nearby.

Kim Hanjoong: The library is located between the QUEENMAMA MARKET and mtl Hyochang, I also hope for the best! (laugh)

I Want to Believe It Is Never Small

Kim Yeram: You have conducted many F&B projects so far.

Kim Hanjoong: Overall, I have enjoyed working on them, but sometimes it was hard going when I wasnʼt able to come up with trendy new urban ideas but to continue serving on plates and tables. As we had more renovation projects and extensions last year, I thought about this question more often.

Kim Yeram: I remember noting in your office profile on the company website that you show interest in the little things. Does this have its own meaning?

Kim Hanjoong: I am interested in a natural lifestyle. When I set up a restaurant and a café, I spend a good amount of time studying and considering options.

Kim Yeram: Just because the size of the work is small, it doesn’t mean that the weight of one’s happinesses are light.

Kim Hanjoong: That is right. Thereʼs something good about designing spaces in which people eat and drink coffee. If you think about it more and more, you will begin to receive valuable feedback. You come to see a vast quantity of number of opinions compared to those expressed when designing a detached house or office space.

Kim Hanjoong, our interviewee, wants to be shared some stories from Park Woorin (principal, cucurrucucu) in September issue.

Kim Hanjoong

Kim Hanjoong studied architecture at Seoul National University and gained work experience at KYWC architects. Since 2017, he has been at the head of basement workshop and ground architects. He is interested in smaller elements than grand impressions, and he adopts a working attitude that places value on the individual rather than the whole. He believes that furniture, interior spaces, architecture, and cities are contiguous.