Figures of Speech: Ken Sungjin Min’s Narrative Approach to Complexity
“We know nothing of vast multiplicity, we cannot come to terms with it as architects or planners or anybody else… But if society has no form how can architects build its counterform?”
Aldo Van Eyck
Emerging Complexity
Buildings are becoming more complex. Driven by a diversifying society, advances in technical and sustainable construction, higher density urban planning, and the rising expectations of owners, architects must increasingly design for multi-faceted programmes. This is increasingly the case in Korea, where across all sectors of architecture including governmental, educational, housing, and commercial, the ‘dominant’ programme is being integrated with cultural and community facilities. This complexity can be a good thing: if a building contains more functions, it can generate more synergies between activities. Nonetheless, complex programming is a grey disciplinary area. Architecture students in their formative first three years are taught that programme is prescribed not invented. For the practicing architect, the official contract of American Institute of Architects places the burden of programming on the client. Similarly, with almost all major competitions in Korea, the programme is predetermined by a client-side committee before it is set as a strictly adjudicated requirement. When buildings must harbour multiple, interrelated activities therefore, clients are seemingly best advised by outside groups to determine one of the most critical steps of the architectural design process.
But if the essence of programming is the spatialisation of use patterns, is it not an inherent contradiction that architects are merely fulfilling the process rather than leading it? Perhaps this can explain two trends that widen the distance between design and programme. The
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