SPACE November 2024 (No. 684)
Traces of the Suburbs, Orchestrating the Landscape: AYU SPACE
① Interview Cho Byoungsoo principal, BCHO Partners × Kim Jeoungeun editor-in-chief
② Interview Miyoung von Platen principal, AYU SPACE × Kim Jeoungeun
③ Interview Jeon Yongseung landscape architect × Bang Yukyung
④ Interview Hong Kyungjin partner, BCHO Partners × Bang Yukyung
The garden and hanok at AYU SPACE. New café behind the preserved old hanok. The masonry building, seen on the right side of the photo, used to be a vacation home, was renovated by BCHO Partners. ©Sergio Pirrone
The courtyard of the café newly constructed. ©Sergio Pirrone
① Interview Cho Byoungsoo principal, BCHO Partners × Kim Jeoungeun editor-in-chief
Kim: If the original warehouse of the Blue Barn is representative of the architecture of a naturally formed farming village, the site of AYU SPACE in Namyangju is demonstrative of a city suburb with scattered buildings and structures out of context. The site, which faces the Bukhangang River, featured an old hanok, a western-style house, and a garden that had been cultivated for decades. In order to create a new complex cultural space, the hanok and the western-style house, which had been used as a private holiday home for many years, were remodelled while maintaining their original characters much as possible. In addition, a new café was built around the courtyard, weaving them together into a single landscape. The western-style house is a mansion. It is unusually angled and even has two hipped-and-gable roofs. What was your reaction when you first encounter this situation?
Cho: When I first saw the site, I thought we were in big trouble. The houses were made of heavy concrete and stone, the trees in the garden were trimmed in a style that was popular in the 1970s and 1980s. There were even unsightly bridge piers right out front, as an expressway was being built. The expressway is convenient, but it’s an ugly structure that ruins the rural landscape. As such, the café was positioned away from the bridge, and a courtyard was created, with the slope of the floor adjusted so that the view could be directed towards an old ginkgo tree. However, there was no way to avoid the bridge piers in the western-style house, so we introduced a triangular glass structure to divert attention and compensate for the unpleasant view.
Kim: When I first saw it (the western-style house) in photographs, it looked like a kaleidoscopic mirage, with a glass structure jutting out into the garden and the gnarled trees reflected in the mirror (mirrored stainless steel). When I look at the photographs again, I realise now there are bridge piers in the landscape. (laugh)
Cho: At first we thought about ripping out the existing windows and putting in conventional windows, but the proportions didn’t feel right, and we just didn’t want to add windows. We had more space in terms of building-to-land ratio, so we made a bold decision to expand the space and get closer to nature.
Extension from western-style house towards the terrace. It neutralises the overbearing impression of the highway bridge outside. ©Kang Kyeonghee
The frame made of mirrored stainless steel reflects the surrounding landscape. It neutralises the overbearing impression of the highway bridge outside. ©BCHO Partners
©BCHO Partners
Western-style house under construction, with the interior finish stripped away to reveal the frame. The wall on the terrace with a view of the river has been removed. ©BCHO Partners
Kim: When we discussed this project with the editorial team, everyone was curious about how the glass structure had been joined.
Cho: This is a very intimate detail. The glass panels meet in triangles, and the members, which are finished in mirrored stainless steel, are also triangular. The reason we used a triangular form is because the protruding structure is misshapen, we thought it would be nice to choose the form that fits into it, but the vertical surface of the members that hold the glass reflects the river in the distance and the top side reflects the sky, so you have the sky within the sky. This was something we really wanted to achieve, so we did a lot of research.
Kim: That’s how it became a playful space, where it’s clearly an interior space, and there’s a frame that separates the glass, but it also feels like you’re in a garden outside. If you look at it from outside the house, it looks like part of the garden.
Cho: Given the overall budget, which wasn’t very generous, we decided to focus on just one element. That’s why we created a new protruding structure on the Bukhangang River side of the elevation to emphasise it, and the rest of the space was finished in a rough state with the finishes stripped off. In addition, only the parts that were functionally necessary were made into plywood structures and inserted like furniture.
The terrace of the western-style house (Culture House) after renovation ©Kang Kyeonghee
Extension from the inside (Culture House) after renovation ©Kang Kyeonghee
② Interview Miyoung von Platen principal, AYU SPACE × Kim Jeoungeun
Kim Jeoungeun: What made you decide to open a cultural space in the suburbs?
Miyoung von Platen: I majored in art history and art management, and worked as an independent curator for over 30 years in Europe. Naturally, I experienced sharing culture and art with the public by holding events such as open houses rather than exclusive use for only a few. Europe actively uses the old spaces of many historic works of architecture. When I returned to Korea, I wanted to continue these activities. I launched a natural skincare product before creating AYU SPACE. I had an offline store in the city, but I thought it would be great to create a space in which to experience a new brand of natural ingredients. Inspired by the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, I created a garden where visitors could experience the ingredients, and the restaurant has a field nearby to grow the ingredients.
Cho Byoungsoo ©Bang Yukyung
Walking through the AYU SPACE garden ©Bang Yukyung
Kim Jeoungeun: You’ve created a complex cultural space where local people can enjoy healthy food and art in their daily lives. How did you find a way of relating to and coexisting with the local community as an outsider?
Miyoung von Platen: It was difficult at first, but I visited every village event to say hello and hired the keeper from the villagers. I wanted to let them know that I wasn’t running it just for myself. I set up a parking lot on the side of the main road and ran a shuttle bus for fear of inconveniences such as traffic and noise due to the increase in visitors. I think they appreciated my efforts, and now they give my clients directions first when they arrive at the village.
The hanok renovated as a gallery, Miyoung von Platen on the left ©Bang Yukyung
③ Interview Jeon Yongseung landscape architect × Bang Yukyung
Bang Yukyung: I heard that you’ve collaborated with Cho Byoungsoo for a long time. How did you begin working on Blue Barn?
Jeon Yongseung: When I first visited the site, there was nothing to landscape because there were only rice fields, and the site was so small. I thought that if I connected it to the farm road at the back of the site, I could secure width enough to do something, so I suggested that we make a path and a hill. Fortunately, Cho told me to recycle the concrete pieces, so I created a path with them. I was worried that introducing a hill behind the stay home would be a burden. Cho wanted to extend the rice paddy horizontally at the end of the site. I thought the relationship of direct exposure was a bit ambiguous, so I made a low hill to obscure the view slightly. The rice paddy comes into sight beyond the hill. Crape Myrtle in the yard were planted to make the narrow yard look wider. A small yard looks narrow when you can see the boundary, but it looks wider when you plant it densely. I wanted to give a hint that there is a space behind it.
Jeon Yongseung, landscape architect of the Blue Barn, AYU SPACE, and YOUTHQUAKE. He points at a sketch of the Blue Barn with his finger. ©Bang Yukyung
Bang Yukyung: What was important to you when working on AYU SPACE?
Jeon Yongseung: Cho suggested using stones in the courtyard of the café. He wanted to cut down pine trees and keep only the ginkgo trees because the existing pine trees looked too artificial, but the client wanted to save all of them if possible. To mediate between the two, I planted grass throughout to separate the areas. The scene of a river beyond the grass delivers the movement of the water and grass, which is nice to experience while strolling through the site.
Entrance to AYU SPACE, planted with grass ©Kang Kyeonghee
Bang Yukyung: You were also in charge of landscaping YOUTHQUAKE in Tongui-dong, Seoul.
Jeon Yongseung: I worked on emptying and organising the yard of Building C. The gallery has a small yard, so it needed to feel empty. The walls are floating, and the terrain goes down, so I thought it would be nice to bring plants into space along with light. I planted moss all the way inside and made a small waterway in front of it. The water of the small stream will reflect light into the building in the winter.
Aerial view of AYU SPACE. The café built with reinforced concrete on the top, and below the café, hanok on the left, and the western-style house on the right. ©Sergio Pirrone
③ Interview Hong Kyungjin partner, BCHO Partners × Bang Yukyung
Bang Yukyung: I’m curious about the background to the Park Taejun Memorial.
Hong Kyungjin: Gijang-gun office first planned a park-type memorial to revitalise tourism in the area and provide a resting space for residents. The bereaved family donated the site near his birthplace following discussion, which created the public project. A design competition was also held. The idea was to make the space itself a decent place rather than a space to commemorate an individual, and to provide new attractions in the area. The site was originally in a remote neighbourhood, but a Starbucks recently opened across the street from the memorial hall as a result of the increase in the number of visitors.
The courtyard of the new memorial building. The wall is lowered so that the House of Park Taejun could be seen from the memorial. ©Sergio Pirrone
Bang Yukyung: I heard that you carried out new construction and revitalisation work at the same time.
Hong Kyungjin: The new exhibition building was designed in such a way so that it would preserve the two existing trees (the town’s grandfather tree and the late Prime Minister Park Taejoon’s favorite tree) and wrap around them. The height of the walls is slightly lower so that the house would be visible from inside the memorial hall. After clearing the memorial site and widening the road, it was deemed inevitable that we would expropriate and demolish some existing houses, but we proposed to keep three of them. They have been regenerated as office, education building, and seminar building. The seminar building has been extended across two stories from a single-storey building with steel frames. We wrapped the first and second floors with corten steel louvers so that the exterior read as one building. The existing building had a brick structure, and corten steel boxes are stacked to make exterior louvers, which resembles the masonry of bricks. We applied cement plaster to the exterior walls of the old buildings which are transformed into office and education building after removing the existing finish. We wanted to preserve the physical properties of the existing exterior wall materials, but during the construction of the memorial hall, the adjacent soil washed away, causing cracks, so we had to reinforce the structure and camouflage the exterior walls. It was a shame, but I’m glad that at least some of the old tile finish can still be seen inside the memorial. The original wooden beams in the buildings are also preserved.
There are two preserved ginkgo trees in the courtyard. ©Kim Jeoungeun
Hong Kyungjin explaining the corten steel finish of Seminar Building which is similar to brick masonry ©Bang Yukyung
Seminar Building of Park Taejun Memorial. A one-storey house was expanded to two stories and wrapped in corten steel on the outside. To the left, extruded aluminum panels are used as the main material of the new building. ©Sergio Pirrone
The interior of office keeps the roof of the existing house. ©Sergio Pirrone
Inside of Office Building, Park Taejun Memorial ©Sergio Pirrone
The new Museum Building wraps around the Office Building which was renovated from the old house. Two buildings have been spaced so that the old building could be viewed through various gaps. ©Sergio Pirrone
