Public Programs @ the Institute

Wednesday, November 19, 2025, 6:00pm

Modern architecture in Korea is a dense, enigmatic, and very much understudied topic. Fragments and Networks presents two different approaches in my studies of modern and contemporary Korean architecture. The concern with fragments is primarily about the relation between architecture and language; about the way they form disciplines and discursive practices. Conjoined with Korea’s condensed history of modern architecture, the most basic history of its concepts has yet to be written. Key modern terms such as space, proportion, tectonics, and type, as well as common building elements such as the wall, floor, and roof – long established ideas in the Western tradition - are uncertain concepts within the context of Korean architecture. The fragment can be a neo-traditional tiled roof, the madang (courtyard of the Korean house), or a basic concept such as space. Space (gong-gan in Korean) for example comes into the architectural vocabulary only in the late 1960s. Through a disjuncted set of interactions with Western and Japanese sources, it provided a mechanism that departed from colonial historiographies and earlier norms of architectural experience. In Western discourse, fragments have also been created by the ruptures of cultural tradition. Here, in contrast to Korea, their allegorical force is effective because its traditions still assert systematic authority. With the disruptive experiences of Korea’s last century, I have argued that it is the fragment that furnishes the starting point for a narrative of its modern architecture.

My concern with networks is more recent, motivated by climate change and questions about architecture’s response to this vast crisis. The issues in South Korea are particularly acute as its construction industry has been long dominated by concrete. Initial studies have analyzed the evolving material networks of different housing typologies during the latter half of the twentieth century. Very much in its early stages, research has been generated in the context of curatorial projects engaged with climate change and has thus manifested in writing as well as visual media. If both fragments and networks are modes of representation, constituent of practice, and phenomena of experience, my question is whether they can be bound as part of an evolving narrative of Korean architecture.

Pai Hyungmin, Professor at the University of Seoul, is an architectural historian, critic, and curator. Twice a Fulbright scholar, he received his Ph.D from the History, Theory, and Criticism program at MIT. His numerous publications include The Portfolio and the Diagram, key reading in architecture schools around the world, Key Concepts of Korean Architecture, and Sensuous Plan: Architecture of Seung H-Sang. He was artistic director of the inaugural Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism and the 5th Gwangju Folly. He was twice curator of the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which in 2014, was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Pavilion. His recent work has focused on climate change, particularly the material networks of production, consumption, and waste. His Climate Museum: Life and Death of our Home received the Red Dot Award for its innovative and sustainable exhibition design.