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A Bicycle Embodying the Architectonics of Nature: Studio IL HOON ROH

photographed by
Lee Hae Won (unless otherwise indicated)
materials provided by
Studio IL HOON ROH
edited by
Lee Sowoon

SPACE March 2025 (No. 688)

 

MIKALON Bike 

 

Hybrid folding method with a separable mechanism 

 

Interview Roh Ilhoon principal, Studio IL HOON ROH × Lee Sowoon 

 

Architect and designer Roh Ilhoon attends to experimental furniture and installation work driven by a structural approach. His aesthetic objective is to explore how nature develops its own optimal forms and to reveal their excellence and beauty by reinterpreting them as architectural sculptures. Although it has not been publicly revealed until now, he has been working on a bicycle project entitled MIKALON since 2018. He has captured the structural ideas he has been researching for over ten years in the form of a bicycle. MIKALON, which began as a ‘moving exhibition’ and ‘a work of art that can be used every day’, has completed its years-long preparatory process and is set for an official overseas launch this April.​

 

Lee Sowoon (Lee): I’m curious about what led you to stop practicing architectural design and begin producing artworks.

Roh Ilhoon (Roh): When I studied and practiced architecture, I conducted a lot of experiments. Those experiments weren’t about making models but rather about visualising structural ideas or aesthetic goals. I believe that is the purest form of architecture. However, actually building a structure involves financial and technical limitations. For instance, if a particular structural method requires a budget of one billion KRW to be realised in full, but you can do it for one hundred million KRW using concrete, then you’re forced to choose the more economical method. That inevitably weakens its fundamental integrity. It’s only natural, and it might be part of the realisation process, but I found it distressing. I like forms found in nature, such as waves, ripples, lightning, or the patterns of Earth’s magnetic fields. About fifteen years ago, I had numerous ideas regarding structures that draw upon these perfect shapes generated by nature. I thought about creating architectural sculptures to express these in their purest possible state. Howev...

 
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Roh Ilhoon
Roh Ilhoon graduated from the AA School in London, earned his Master’s in Design Products from the Royal College of Art, completed a graduate architecture programme at Kingston University London, and obtained the RIBA qualification in the U.K. After gaining practical experience at Foster + Partners, he founded Studio IL HOON ROH in 2010 and debuted internationally the following year with an invitational show at the Aram Gallery in the U.K. Since 2013, he has been active in Korea, presenting experimental furniture and installation works. In 2017, his Rami Bench was acquired for the permanent collection of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and that same year, he held his first solo exhibition in Korea, titled ‘Material Architectonics’, at the Platform-L Contemporary Art Museum. In 2018, he installed Rami Wall at the SPC Lounge in Incheon Airport, and in 2019, he showed his collaborative project Parabola Chandelier with Samsung Electronics at the Cheongju Craft Biennale. Eight years ago, he began the MIKALON bicycle project in order to create artwork people can actually use.
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