[CRITIQUE] Prelude to a Figure | On architects

SPACE June 2026 (No. 703)

 

HORIGUL (2025)​ 

 

 

Prefiguration​ 

From the beginning of a project to its completion as a physical reality, there are two early moments that determine a project’s destiny: the first encounter with the client and the first encounter with the site. At the first meeting with a client, conversation usually centres on how the site has been selected and eventually purchased. The stories leading to that site are often lengthy. They begin with old family histories, continue through the difficulties of raising funds, and extend to personal dreams that had been held for a long time. As the architect listens to these anecdotes and musings, certain images naturally begin to form in the imagination. The architect then visits the site and finds pertinent clues within its human and physical environment. This is when the figure of the future architecture begins to emerge. If form is a fixed and enclosed result, figure refers to the body of an open place containing a narrative that encompasses the past, present, and future.

 

 

 

HORIGUL​

 

 

Naming: A Promise​

NOXON (2019), Mimmim (2021, covered in SPACE No. 661), NONSPACE (2021, covered in SPACE No. 661), Layer-Layered House (2023), HORIGUL (2025), DDeun GoG (2026), 5·3·2, 2·3·5 (2023), and so on. Beginning with the early work NOXON, the names that Jung Woongsik (Principal, On architects) has given to each project have become inseparable from the projects themselves, to the extent that they now form part of the identity of his architecture. The name – including its Korean and English spelling – has in a sense become the destiny of the architecture. Whether the name was given at the beginning of the project, during the design or construction process, or after completion is not especially important. Architects have always named buildings or proposed keywords, but such titles are often used strategically to communicate meaning effectively, creating a gap from the actual work. For Jung Woongsik, however, the name is like a first promise. It is a prefiguration that already contains the image of the building to come, and a kind of magical act in which Korean and English names, originally phonetic writing systems, are transformed into ideographic signs. It is the trace of the intense mental effort required to achieve architectural coherence.

 

 

 

5·3·2, 2·3·5 (2023) 

 

 

Clues: Seeds of a Narrative​

Layer-Layered House recalls NOXON. A gesture that is at once defensive and aggressive towards the surrounding context appears in the form of layers, something like DNA that persistently recurs throughout his projects. In NOXON, the layered composition painstakingly constructed within limited site conditions is carefully wrapped with carbonised copper panels individually burnt by fire, while in Layer-Layered House it is expressed through bush clover exposed concrete. Through the carbonised copper and bush clover concrete, he appears to show that the narrative of a place is built slowly and painstakingly, stitch by stitch.The clue for DDeun GoG comes from the narrow passage formed by the breakwater below the site. Two concrete walls, somewhat exaggerated in form, clearly divide the building into two, and through their artificiality create a strong rupture with the surroundings. The act of cutting contains the memory of a territory that had already been violently cut and left behind by the road before the building was built.​

 

 

 

DDeun GoG (2026) 

 

 

Gardens: Inevitable Landscapes​

The garden is one of the key elements that orient his architecture towards the notion of the figure. Its inevitability is determined by how much chemical change the inclusion of the garden generates within the overall project.In DDeun GoG, the water feature is presented as a contemplative space. Paired with the distant sea beyond the living room, it completes the layered composition. The enclosed garden, the view of the harbour, and the vast sea overlap, and endure as a strong afterimage. By contrast, in HORIGUL the garden is reduced to the form of a rough wall. The wall encountered immediately upon entering is always wet with flowing water, while mist forms to provide moisture to the planted flowers, directly evoking the damp image of a cave. Most of the gardens used in his architecture are confined within artificial spaces, yet they always form a relationship with the surrounding nature as part of a larger landscape. This is the point at which the perception of the garden expands. The necessity for the architect to intervene directly in the planning, planting, and composition of the garden also derives from this inevitability. (...)​

 

 

 

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