SPACE May 2025 (No. 690)
I AM AN ARCHITECT
‘I am an Architect’ 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.
Reikis (2022) ©Studio Stucky
Growing Studio Stuckyi
Kim Hyerin: What is the meaning of Studio Stuckyi?
Kim Seona, Lee Soobin: Oh, we’ve actually been asked that quite a lot recently! (laugh) To be honest, there’s no profound meaning behind it. We simply wanted a name that sounded light and approachable. The stuckyi plant, for instance, is often given as a gift and is easy to care for—it only needs watering once a month. We liked that simplicity. Also, ‘studio’ and ‘stuckyi’ have nice partial rhymes. The meaning we later attached to this name is more symbolic: we wanted to create a space that could exist anywhere and thrive no matter where it was placed. It’s about fostering a studio that can flourish in any environment, much like the resilient stuckyi plant.
Kim Hyerin: So, you named your studio according to a rhyme! (laugh) What prompted you to establish your own practice?
Kim Seona: First off, Lee and I were classmates at university—we didn’t planned this, but we ended up taking nearly all of our design studios together. After graduating, we worked at separate firms but kept receiving small commissions from friends—requests to design juice packaging or help out with interiors. So we’d collaborate on projects after work or on weekends. We officially registered our business in 2019, but in 2020 – when we were commissioned for our first architectural project, House Dong-baek (2022) – we naturally found ourselves establishing Studio Stuckyi as a practice.
Kim Hyerin: What would you say se...
