Specialization Design
for Apartment Block
Design Year : 2015
Type : Community building & street furniture
Location : Guri, Korea
Project status : proposal
The world that we have come to realize today is a digital world. We live where digital technology, egoism, and materialism dominate the current era at the subjugation of our humanism.
But we continue to take comfort in the pre-digital, analog life. We feel the desire for a sense of belonging; we yearn for human interaction rather than isolation. We recognize the value of an existence that lies in harmony with nature.
We propose a six-part design -- the main gate, the facade of neighborhood facilities, the kindergarten, the bus stop, benches, and streetlights -- to rethink and to rebuild the community.
In truth, such facilities and features are not those that are usually deemed absolutely necessary to the creation of a community, like the apartment unit or the parking lot. Rather, they are the auxiliary equipment to support a sense of amity among the community and the betterment of individual lives within.
The gate is like the ‘Iljumun’ of temple or ‘Sotdae’ of village in Korea: it signals the existence of a community, and so it symbolizes the community at large. It imparts an awareness to those who walk through the gate that they are one of the community. At the gate's surface are an array of openings, creating an overall porous mass placed at the intersection of the community and the outside world.
The facade of neighborhood facilities is of aluminum pins that preserve uniformity in the massing, while simultaneously featuring a variety of materials between the aluminum pins, so as to provide diversity.
For the kindergarten, we propose a facade that fosters storytelling between the children and the parents.
The bus stop is a unique form that stimulate the children's imagination and fosters a place for conversation between the children and the parents.
The streetlight is not only a functional object at night but also an aesthetic form to be enjoyed during the day.
The bench is for both utility and unity; it accommodates being used as a standalone bench as well as being used in conjunction with other benches.
These six parts independently seem small in physicality, but they together strive to be significant in effect. They all nourish a home to be of fuller days and warmer memories.
We leave behind the Guri Apartment in anticipation of tomorrow's community.
