To Wander Freely in Nature: Lee Jinhyuk

Lee Jinhyuk (Lee): I grew up under Bukhansan Mountain in my youth until I became independent. Since then, I’ve always loved being around lush forests or trees. I chose this location because it’s next to Gyeongui Line Forest Park and I can see a lot of trees from the office window. After I found this place, I noticed that the building next to it, whether by chance or necessity, was the address of the place that my family is registered. So, I signed the contract, thinking of it as especially meaningful.

Lee: This might be seen to be a little trite, and yet… there is a chapter in the Chuangtzu called ‘Free and Easy Wandering (逍遙遊)’. I really liked the shape of those characters. I named the office after them and called it sowayo, which means ‘so (逍) wa (and) yo (遙)’. Isn’t the way it sounds also pretty? (laugh)

Lee: When I started my own practice but hadn’t settled down yet, my mind was a little troubled. I was looking for a book to comfort me, and I took out a copy of the Chuangtzu from the library at my parents’ home and started to read it. I don’t usually read this kind of book, but as I read it, I found Chuangtzu’s audacity and serenity very charming and persuasive.

Lee: I met my current wife around the time I decided to open my own office. I thought that if I got married, I wouldn’t have the courage to start my own practice. But I don’t think it had a good effect on my marriage! I struggled so much at this time. I was lucky enough to win the design competition that I had just about managed to enter, and so far both my office and my marriage are still going strong! (laugh)

Lee: If you look at our early work, it was mainly small-scale interior projects. Before we had public architecture projects to work on, we entered a lot of design competitions and lost a lot of them. I think it was hard for us to go through the process of losing one after another. Thanks to this experience, we have now been able to work on slightly larger projects. It’s been three to four years since I opened my own office, and it’s still tough. I think I had more freedom before I opened my own office, but ever since I opened one, I can’t stop thinking about the office and the work. (laugh) When I was working in someone else’s office, I would bunk off a bit and feel a bit less responsible, but now I have no crutch and no one behind me to back me up.

Lee: When I opened my own office, I just thought it would be great if there was a role where this office could be useful in some way. Because I think architecture can play a role in providing comfort in some aspects of life, just like art, philosophy, and religion. But it’s not easy to find that kind of architecture, and it’s not easy to create it. So, in that sense, I wrote a passage like that, hoping that the office could pursue architecture that could give solace. I hoped that an architecture that provides solace would become more common and that people could experience more of it in their daily lives.

Lee: I think each project seems to have a different brief and set of concerns. Just as I thought about communing with nature as a priority when choosing my office, I found myself continuing to think about that aspect when planning a project. In the case of Cut And Fill (2024), we were given a particularly exceptional site. Although there are limitations when working in the city centre, it was a large site in Nakdong-myeon, Sangju-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do, so we had a lot of access to landscape architecture. We turned the rooftop into a garden and planned the circulation so that there would be more of an invitation to visitors to enter the roof garden. I also like to perform structural experiments in general, and here I was able to try this and that, such as making a skylight of about 15m without beams in order to bring a lot of light into the space. I was lucky! (laugh) It was a project on which I exerted myself for about a year with architects Bae Hongchul (co-principal, pilpil) and Choi Yoonju, who worked at THE_SYSTEM LAB and ONE O ONE architects respectively. I have the most affection for this project of all so far.

Lee: I like the area of landscape architecture very much, but it’s also a different kind of professional field so I had a lot of help from director Yi Daeyoung at Studio L. The architectural plan of this project has static lines, whereas landscape architecture utilises a lot of freely designed lines. It seems unfamiliar at first, but when I went to the site and saw it for myself, it blends in quite well. I would like to study it more if I get the chance.

Lee: I think furniture has a lot in common with architecture in that it needs a structure to stand on, and it also needs finishing materials on top of it. So when I design furniture, I try to find the part that meets and touches the space. I also think that a space that is designed by an architect, but whose furniture isn’t, has a lower level of completeness than a space and its furniture that are both designed by the architect. I felt this in the Tama Art University Library (2007), designed by Ito Toyo. In Tama Art University Library, the structure of the building is also used as an interior element, and the textiles inside are also modelled after the elements of the structure. I think the experience of a space where the structure, the interior and the textiles are unified by the same elements remained so pleasant that I tried to work in that direction.

Lee: First of all, for me and for architects of my generation, renovation itself is inevitable. It reminds me of a story my friend once told me. I had a friend who was particularly fond of cold rice. I asked that friend why he liked cold rice so much, and he said that cold rice is a particular kind of dish because it only becomes cold when it cools down from hot rice. It seemed strange at the time, but the fact remains that fried rice tastes good when you make it with cold rice. In a way, it’s the same with renovation, because now that the freshly built architecture from the oven is getting fewer and fewer, old architecture with new values over time has emerged as a good culinary ingredient, and I think renovation is a good dish to cook with this ingredient. It’s a fun task that can bring out the charm that the building had before but for whatever reason has been overlooked.

By coincidence, the last project I was in charge of at ONE O ONE architects was also the Amorepacific Sulloc Hyangsil, Jeju (2020), a renovation of a house on Jeju Island which was transformed into a tea house. I stayed on Jeju Island for five months and was able to oversee the entire process of tearing down the previous building and rebuilding a new building. The first renovation project I worked on after leaving the company was Exfoliate (2021). I joined the directors, Joon Ma and Ryu Ahn at one-aftr, when they were in the United States and needed someone to work on a project in Korea. I participated in the design, was in charge of communication on site, and resolved various conflicts myself. I remember enjoying working on the project because it was around the time I left the company, but before I started hiring in earnest, so I had a lot of freedom.

Lee: That’s right. It was an innovative exhibition organised by the curator, Noh Hansoo, in which three architects were asked to submit plans for an extension through the medium of writing. At that time, I had been working on the design of Cut And Fill for a year, but no matter how hard I pushed the design, it remained in a very stagnant state with no results in sight. In the case of public architecture, progress has been slow because there are so many agents involved. But the medium of writing is something that can be completed as soon as I finish writing. The sense of speed, which is faster than the designing phase, was agreeable. At that time, I was more focused on the extension within the extension of alternative spaces, so I wrote a faction called ‘Pus of Desire’. You see, extension is an act with the intention of wanting to add something to what the original architect intended, for whatever reason. In doing so, it makes something different from the original plan. And I thought the word pus expressed that desire very well.

Lee: In order to maximise the charm of the existing building, we make sure that the new additions don’t disrupt the existing structural order. Let me take the Exfoliate as an example. If there are existing columns and we need to add a new finish, we install the new finish on a different layer from the columns, rather than on the same layer, so that the existing columns can look more like columns. The way we do it is by identifying the charm of the existing building and imagining how the two would work if we added certain elements without covering the existing one. It’s like when you’re wearing clothes and you think it would be really interesting to match this style with that style. So, in a way, it feels like we’re collaborating with the original architect.

On the other hand, if we had a big budget, I wonder if that kind of gesture of respect might not have come about. (laugh) In any case, it’s very difficult to take something out, because you’re adding to something that already exists, and you’re being asked by the client to make a profit. But it’s fun to find the right point, while thinking about how to extract pertinent elements and create harmony.

Lee: Actually, I spend most of my time in the office. When I was employed by a company, I think I might have had a thirst to create my own things. I used to make shelves at home and I used to go to an atelier, but ever since I opened my own office, my hobbies other than architecture have diminished considerably. Perhaps it’s because we don’t have a lot of staff yet, and I tend to be very hands-on to improve the completeness of our buildings. However, I tend to clear my head and refresh myself by watering the plants in the office or taking a walk in Gyeongui Line Forest Park.

But if there’s something that’s important to me apart from work, it’s that my wife is expecting a baby in soon. So that’s my biggest interest right now, besides the survival of the office.

Lee: Thank you. (laugh) If I could be free of being responsible for the survival of the office, I would like to sequester myself somewhere away from the world, like going to a remote forest with no internet and no mobile phones, just to read books.

In that vein, I would like to have a life where I could also go for a lot of walks.

You can see more information on the SPACE No. September (2024).