A City’s Skin, Face, or Façadism?
With the era defined by globalisation seemingly coming to an end, whither Korean architecture today? In fact, this question may seem banal and too obtuse to elicit a valuable answer, but architect Kim Seunghoy’s works are worthy of note for exhibiting a major symptom as a result of recent history. Here, I think the most significant topic to discuss is the expression of a building’s skin and its materials. Consisting of many overlapping thoughts, however, the subject requires more explanation than easy interpretation.
As a matter of fact, I think this is the first time that the issue of the skin has been foregrounded in a discussion of Korean architecture. Properties of specific materials have of course been explored, but such discussions are often overwhelmed by key concepts such as space, constructability, regionality, and landscape. Therefore, it is necessary to examine why the building’s skin is so popular today and what lies behind this fascination. Historically, the building skin has been dealt with from two perspectives; from the perspective of semantics, and that of construction. The first perspective can be
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