SPACE July 2023 (No. 668)
Han Seungjae drew a picture of Han Yangkyu, a figure who likes to monitor other people’s progress. It was displayed in the staircase of designcamp moonpark dmp’s office. ⓒHan Seungjae
[CRITIQUE]What Else Can I Do?
I’m writing this article in the lobby of the the Royal National Theatre in London, as a stop on my journey. Yangkyu implored me to hand over my review as soon as possible. I found this space while I was looking for a place to work on my laptop, and I was not the only one picking at simple food while using their laptop. The Royal National Theatre is representative of rough and weighty brutalist architecture, and at first glance the building won’t allow people inside without acknowledging its monumental presence. The public, however, use it freely. It’s a beautiful building, but what makes it more beautiful is the gratitude it prompted in me as a user. It’s the perfect place to go when one has nowhere else to go. At what point did I feel gratitude? When I recall my experience of something similar in Seoul, when I used to go home after wandering the streets for cafés to find a spot to stay a while, I don’t think I found such a welcoming space. I felt sad when I remembered Seoul slang, such as cagong-jok (the study tribe in a café). Fortunately, I have one friend with whom I can share my sorrow. He gets extremely angry when he hears something he hates, is enthusiastic when he hears something he likes; behaving like a briquette that burns brightly when lit. I felt sure that Yangkyu would understand my story. I believed that he would understand the sorrow prompted by cagong-jok and the gratitude felt for a place without lengthy explanations. But I didn’t call him.
Yangkyu’s college portfolio begins with an image of hot briquettes. Architecture students in their final year tend to be absorbed in the somewhat childish attempt to encompass their self-image with a single image, and Yangkyu chose a briquette. Similarly, he was not a person who burns alone, but a person who is satisfied by stirring other’s blood. He always wanted to do great things, and he wanted to work with others rather than by himself. At school and in his studio, he would urge people to do something cool. But those who have a briquette around must know how tiring this can be. Yangkyu applied to several architectural design firms, but they all rejected him, sensing the ominous carbon monoxide emanating from his portfolio. At an interview with SPACE Group, he jumped up from his seat when the interviewer asked if there were any final questions to scold other candidates in the room for not asking any questions. He was the only one who failed the interview. The only place that took him on was designcamp moonpark dmp (hereinafter dmp). I saw him for the first time when I was a new employee at dmp, and he was just a rookie with only two years of experience. Thinking that he could finally do something new, he looked around his surroundings opening his big and bright eyes and drawing his mouth up almost to his nose. Keeping a close eye on those who were hard at work, he often told them to go up to the roof and get some air, particularly if a person was too absorbed in their work. It was a task that some would thank him for. A legendary story at dmp goes that Yangkyu broke into the president’s office when he was a new employee. One day, shortly after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Yangkyu, overwhelmed with emotion, barged on the door to the president’s office, and said to Moon Jinho, ‘Mr. President, what are we doing here? We should do something, as we are architects!’ President Moon laughed heartily, looking at Yangkyu with pride, and asked him to suggest something they could do. Yangkyu answerd ‘Okay, sir!’, and shut his mouth tight and walked out the door, never visiting his office again. He was just boiling over but hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. Yangkyu’s gritch, which was almost like a tantrum, was similar to once idealistic young people. It was reminiscent of the songs that resonated with me in my childhood, those without tears or sadness. These were old souls who believed that the world was still in their hands, and used to present their slogan to the world through their songs. When I heard John Lennon’s voice asking me to imagine a world without heaven, country, and religion, when I saw the red, big mouth of 4 Non Blondes screaming in a rage about what the hell was going on in the world, my heart swelled like a big stone that hadn’t moved would start rolling. When I didn’t understand that the world doesn’t change easily, I was so moved by those words.
And so I cry sometimes When I’m lying in bed
Just to get it all out what’s in my head
And I, I’m feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning and I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream from the top of my lungs
‘What’s going on?’
– From 4 Non Blondes’ What’s up?
Yangkyu still didn’t seem to realise that the world doesn’t change easily. To me, he was a welcome colleague and my tool. ‘Yes, you believe the world can change... You’re just as stupid as I am...’ I asked him to be close friends, and although I was his junior, I would talk in a casual way as if we were the same age. At the time, Hanjin looked like a hippie with long hair, wearing round glasses like John Lennon, and enjoying listening to The Flaming Lips’ Do You Realize??. His KakaoTalk profile was the word ‘freedom’. He was younger than me and Yangkyu, but he would talk to Yangkyu in a casual way too as I did to Yangkyu. That’s how the three of us met, as dreamers. While Hanjin and I were the type of people who would drink and talk about something that sounded like a dream, Yangkyu was crazier. He was the type of person who would act before he thought instead of sitting on his hands.
Yangkyu carefully draws a floor plan and rubs out it with an eraser on yellow tracing paper (he never uses white tracing paper). His enthusiasm heats up the paper, drawing and rubbing out, but he rarely departs from a rectangular frame. For him, design is the sense of accomplishment in solving a difficult problem. He keeps playing a game of posing a problem to himself and then figuring out how to solve it by himself. Like a jigsaw puzzle. At MMD Clover,
Yangkyu began playing a game of space division. A staircase is usually used as a common space, but he placed it separately so that each household could have separate entrances. What impressed me the most when I visited the house was the climb up the stairs. Ascending the twisting staircase as if climbing a tree leads one to the clean walls and clear windows upstairs. The space feels cosy, like a bird’s nest in a tree, separated from the ground. But when I recall the floor plan of the house, which is filled with staircases like a mouth full of teeth, I can’t help but think, ‘There are too many stairs in such a tiny house.’ If there were only one common staircase, it could have saved more space in the house. One of Yangkyu’s team mates defended him, saying that he added the staircases because he hates waste. He didn’t want to leave any space unused. If a staircase becomes a public space, it belongs to no one, but if it belongs to me, it is my space. In other words, when you have your own staircase, you will take good care of it.
The design of Memories of Huam-dong was not a problem that Yangkyu exacerbated alone. This is where he faced his most challenging design task. The constraints surrounding the building made it a challenge to construction. The width of the road around the building increased, which reduced the site, and the land was too steep devise even a single parking lot. ‘Find the point of contact on the graphs of the six first-order functions.’ Yangkyu struggled to find a place in which to construct the building under such difficult conditions and crammed a staircase into it. He then piled up the rest of the space to create the space. It took three years to get the permit and another three years to find a contractor willing to take this chance. ‘Oh my God, Yangkyu, you are so amazing. How did you build a building here?’ These questions are delectable to Yangkyu. At this point, he takes the hot briquettes out to show them off. Listening to his careful explanation of the formulas: f(x)=ax+b, f(x)=bx+c, f(x)=cx+d, a question arose as to why he was going into so much detail.
Detail drawing of Teo 101 Building
When it comes to architecture, there are some factors can be described, and others that cannot. You can explain the volume of a building and its functions, such as structural, equipment, and design approach. How this building is designed and how it works, how cars and pedestrians can access it; drawings can show them to their best advantage, and in fact, if you have drawings, you don’t need to explain a building. Architects don’t even have to be enthusiastic when they talk about a building. Yangkyu’s explanation is a just fever that he hasn’t burned yet.
The things that can’t be described in architecture are those more experiential things that can’t be confirmed in drawings. They are the words or lines of a dream that has yet to be realised: the emotions that will be felt here, those who will live here, and all the ways that this building will change. The current generation of architects, who grew up witnessing utopian architects create slums and apartment blocks that everyone called chicken coops, have become overseers of dream homes, and don’t talk about what they have not experienced. They don’t create community squares, and they don’t create landmarks. Taking this a step further, Yangkyu questions the places that architects love. He pinches the pennies to create spaces where chance encounters can happen, and where effective communication with neighbours can take place. It’s because he has seen, frequently, that public spaces are used for collecting waste paper, and parking a bicycle, which becomes a hotbed of conflict. In a place where people are sharply judging each other, it’s a naïve attitude to plan a pleasant coincidence. Yangkyu doesn’t believe in a dreamy everyday life, but rather in something that can be converted into value. Instead of creating a sunny public space, let’s build one’s own staircase. His design only speaks for what he can say.
After living in a so-called ‘block house’ (a shabby cottage made of cement blocks) with no insulation, he moved to in a semi-basement house where his soles would get wet when it rained. At last he moved to a house above ground, only after he married and had children. Apartment, apartment... I once asked him, when he was visiting many real estate agencies and feeling despondent in the search for an apartment. Why do you bother living in an apartment? ‘What else can I do?’ was his reply. He said, to raise his children, he had no choice and that his wife was afraid of living in a single house. He couldn’t choose a house on a hill to use a stroller, and he couldn’t choose a location without considering education of his children. Old houses are cold and mouldy because they’re built so poorly, and he’d rather choose an apartment than a pretentious old house! Can architecture change the world? If Yangkyu used to cry, ‘We should do something!’, now he shouts, ‘Then what else!’ What happened to my tool, my rock star, Yangkyu?
Before visiting London on this trip, I stayed in Istanbul for a while. I love the city, even though I got scammed several times there. I like the hustle and bustle, the sea and the crowd. I didn’t miss Seoul, which is increasingly in a rut and too refined, where consumers in clean song. It’s become formulaic that revolutionaries who enter the political world soon become hypocrites. Yangkyu, who had been screaming for something to be done, was a vivid dreamer. Like Batman, he grew more and more infuriated and would appear ready to kill anyone at any time, screaming ‘What!’, ‘Where!’ and ‘What an dumbass!’ But who is the real enemy? Is it the apartment? Is it gentrification? They’re just phenomena, and we’re already combined with the real enemy. How can we fight bureaucracy and capitalism even if we have a hero in full armour? A bat-shaped spotlight shines on the dark clouds, and I hear the hero’s voice from below. ‘What else can I do, you dumbass!!!!’ I feel resentment for Yangkyu. He’s still screaming about what the hell is going on. His futile words are a cry to stop talking, cold water poured on someone’s passion. Why have I become an ugly briquette... that’s why I didn’t give him a call.
I visited his recent work, the Teo 101 Building, several times during construction, as the steel frame structure site was clean and it was fun to watch the process, even without him. Most of all, I enjoyed being able to read how the building works. The most outstanding feature of Teo 101 Building is the unique shape of the steel structure, which is the gene shaping the building. Instead of H-beams commonly used in steel buildings, he produced cross-shaped beams and used there. The effect of changing the structural material is to minimise the space wasted by insulation, and the interior walls can be straightened without the curvature of the space caused by the insulation wrapping around the structure. Yangkyu is more excited than anyone on the construction sites for his buildings. Inside the building he designed, he doesn’t ask what else he can do. If he can’t change this world, he decides to make his own world good. If necessary, Yangkyu even manipulates the genes of steel to shape his world. Instead of bending pipes, he folds walls for better plumbing, and hides pipes in the walls to minimise wasted space. ‘Yangkyu, why don’t you make the walls transparent so the structure can be exposed?’ Hanjin suggested, but he told him to shut his mouth: ‘All the pipes should run through the walls. Otherwise, it will be a mess!’
Yangkyu doesn’t speak of what he can’t say. He doesn’t try to attempt anything that he can’t control. So, he limits his world to what he can control: outlined on yellow tracing paper. Yangkyu already knows that thin, flexible lines don’t lead to a flexible world. He knows that thick, dark lines can be used flexibly like in the Royal National Theatre in London, where I’m writing now. Nevertheless, what I’m waiting for is the moment of revolution. The private and public spheres, and the things we shouldn’t forget, and we should seek out and eat, sometimes he thinks of defying stereotypes. Then, a small revolution on the tracing paper can solve the problem. Yangkyu is a dreamer who is determined to be useful. Crying out what else can he do, Yangkyu must have thought that maybe it’s better to give up on the idea of changing the world.
Let’s just make one good thing right, and that’s still revolutionary. A useful dreamer... Looking at the lonely last days of a dreamer, another dreamer thinks he’d rather watch him see something to full completion. clothes and apartments dominate the streets. I like a rougher city with people in dirty clothes, noisy factories, and pungent motorcycle fumes. Now I can understand what the old men say, ‘It was good when everyone was poor, except for the poverty.’ ‘Yangkyu, I think cities should be like this, Yangkyu, Seoul is becoming too pretentious!’ I called him and excitedly talked about my trip. But all he replied was ‘What else can I do... I have to live in Seoul.’ I got bored and hung up the phone, feeling extremely lonely. Then what else can I do, dumbass?
While I was dreaming of so-called ‘change’, the immature young revolutionaries made everyone’s hearts beat faster, but I never saw them finish anything properly. The only end is death. John Lennon was killed by someone’s gun, and Kurt Cobain shot himself. Maybe it’s better to die... It’s really painful to watch a revolutionary survive into adulthood. A musician who deserves respect is labeled as a nostalgia trip now. The 4 Non Blondes, screaming at the sky, were not heard from after that song. It’s become formulaic that revolutionaries who enter the political world soon become hypocrites. Yangkyu, who had been screaming for something to be done, was a vivid dreamer. Like Batman, he grew more and more infuriated and would appear ready to kill anyone at any time, screaming ‘What!’, ‘Where!’ and ‘What an dumbass!’ But who is the real enemy? Is it the apartment? Is it gentrification? They’re just phenomena, and we’re already combined with the real enemy. How can we fight bureaucracy and capitalism even if we have a hero in full armour? A bat-shaped spotlight shines on the dark clouds, and I hear the hero’s voice from below. ‘What else can I do, you dumbass!!!!’ I feel resentment for Yangkyu. He’s still screaming about what the hell is going on. His futile words are a cry to stop talking, cold water poured on someone’s passion. Why have I become an ugly briquette... that’s why I didn’t give him a call.
I visited his recent work, the Teo 101 Building, several times during construction, as the steel frame structure site was clean and it was fun to watch the process, even without him. Most of all, I enjoyed being able to read how the building works. The most outstanding feature of Teo 101 Building is the unique shape of the steel structure, which is the gene shaping the building. Instead of H-beams commonly used in steel buildings, he produced cross-shaped beams and used there. The effect of changing the structural material is to minimise the space wasted by insulation, and the interior walls can be straightened without the curvature of the space caused by the insulation wrapping around the structure. Yangkyu is more excited than anyone on the construction sites for his buildings. Inside the building he designed, he doesn’t ask what else he can do. If he can’t change this world, he decides to make his own world good. If necessary, Yangkyu even manipulates the genes of steel to shape his world. Instead of bending pipes, he folds walls for better plumbing, and hides pipes in the walls to minimise wasted space.
‘Yangkyu, why don’t you make the walls transparent so the structure can be exposed?’ Hanjin suggested, but he told him to shut his mouth: ‘All the pipes should run through the walls. Otherwise, it will be a mess!’ Yangkyu doesn’t speak of what he can’t say. He doesn’t try to attempt anything that he can’t control. So, he limits his world to what he can control: outlined on yellow tracing paper. Yangkyu already knows that thin, flexible lines don’t lead to a flexible world. He knows that thick, dark lines can be used flexibly like in the Royal National Theatre in London, where I’m writing now. Nevertheless, what I’m waiting for is the moment of revolution. The private and public spheres, and the things we shouldn’t forget, and we should seek out and eat, sometimes he thinks of defying stereotypes. Then, a small revolution on the tracing paper can solve the problem. Yangkyu is a dreamer who is determined to be useful. Crying out what else can he do, Yangkyu must have thought that maybe it’s better to give up on the idea of changing the world. Let’s just make one good thing right, and that’s still revolutionary. A useful dreamer... Looking at the lonely last days of a dreamer, another dreamer thinks he’d rather watch him see something to full completion.
Detail drawing of Teo 101 Building
You can see more information on the SPACE No. 668 (July 2023).
