QUESTIONING THE ROLE OF THE SEOUL HALL OF URBANISM & ARCHITECTURE AND SIMILAR INSTITUTIONS

Kim Taehyung (director-general, Urban Space Improvement Bureau in Seoul)

Lim Yookyung (associate research fellow, Architecture & Urban Research Institute)

Jeon Bonghee (chairman of the roundtable / professor, Seoul National University)

Chung Dahyoung (curator, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art)

Shifts in Urban and Architectural Museums and Similar Institutions

Jeon Bonghee (Jeon): The Seoul Hall of Urbanism & Architecture opened last March. With this as momentum, I would like to discuss what directions urban and architectural museums and similar institutions should take. The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) and the Seoul Museum of History has performed pioneering work in taking charge of modern times and history respectively, while continuously showing interest in the urban and architectural content. The National Architecture and City Museum, which is planned to be built in Sejong, has also been under discussion for more than a decade. Furthermore, even though it is a slightly different type, there is the Korean Territorial Development Museum run by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport (MOLIT). Please feel free to introduce what kind of jobs that similar institutions, which deal with urban and architectural contents, cultivate.

Chung Dahyoung (Chung): Since 2011, as an architectural curator was recruited at the MMCA, the Museum became more engaged with architectural research and exhibitions. A tangible achievement has been that architectural exhibitions would be held regularly, once or twice a year. Exhibitions used to be organised on an occasional basis, and many of them were even driven by the suggestions from the outside rather than from the museum. It is important to note that from 2011 onwards, the museum began to actively produce its own content, hiring not only curators but also professional architectural archivists, and established the Art Research Center in 2013. The exhibition entitled ‘Figurative Journal: Chung Guyon Archive’ and the archive of Chong Guyon’s architectural work became great opportunities for the archiving activities of the Art Research Center. Since then, we have structured the archives of Kim Jong-sung and that of Itami Jun in conjunction with the exhibitions and continue to collect the data of not only the architects but the researchers. The archive served as an anchor to open the place for architectural discourse in art museums. Recently, as a part of the activities of applied arts (crafts, design, architecture), we are also publicising the acquisition of more collections and archives. It is similar to the research seminar ‘By-Product / Power’, recently held in cooperation with the Mokchon Kimjungsik Foundation. More than 200 people attended and discussed the dynamism of archive, a theme becoming more prominent for Korean architecture.