A Hospitable Space, Holding the Memory of the City: Artsite Soje

SPACE April 2026 (No. 701) 

©Bang Yukyung 

Railway City and Railway Quarters

My connection with Soje-dong began while teaching a university design studio on adaptive reuse. While searching for a site for students to research, I was introduced to Soje-dong through a building owner based in Daejeon. Soje-dong, located in Dong-gu, Daejeon, was originally a place where Sojeho Lake once existed. In the early 1900s, during the Japanese colonial period, the lake was filled in to make way for the railway, and Daedongcheon Stream was redirected to flow parallel to the railway tracks. Soje-dong developed into one of the residential districts for railway workers that formed around Daejeon Station. As the largest surviving railway quarters in Korea, the area retains many of its original architectural and spatial characteristics, giving it significant historical and cultural value. In the 2010s, the area began to revive as artists moved in and established a creative base called Soje Creating Community Residency. Wooden houses more than a century old coexist with renovated buildings, and the once-stagnant neighbourhood was transformed into a major destination attracting tens of thousands of visitors a day, supported by events such as the Artbelt and the Bakery Festival. As of  2020, the Daejeon Station District Development Project began to move forward. With plans underway to construct mixed-use residential and office complexes ranging from 30 to 70 stories around Soje-dong, the surrounding roads and tram lines are currently being reorganised. 

Sustainable Urban Regeneration

Meanwhile, commercial urban regeneration led by private companies since 2019 transformed several railway quarters into hotspots like cafés and restaurants with unique concepts, successfully drawing public interest. However, these attempts led to rising rents and the overheating of real estates, resulting in gentrification. Six years later, abandoned houses have begun to appear around the newly opened cafés, and the residential environment has rapidly deteriorated due to lack of maintenance.

As development in the Daejeon Station area gains momentum, the city’s old downtown district – including Soje-dong – is undergoing rapid transformation. Against this backdrop, the client,^▼1 who had been promoting projects to establish a local cultural foundation in the Soje-dong and In-dong areas, came together with a shared conviction that the area’s unique sense of place and cultural heritage value must be preserved. 

Consequently, a collaborative project structure was formed whereby the public sector would build the basic infrastructure – such as roads and public facilities – in the Soje-dong area, and the private sector would attract sustainable cultural projects. This was because, in order to increase the footfall and establish a virtuous cycle for the local economy, it was necessary to create both content-driven cultural and arts programmes and the physical environment in which to accommodate them. It was within this context that we were tasked with reinterpreting and renovating the cluster of railway quarters that had been concentrated in the Soje-dong area. At the time, Daejeon Metropolitan City was proposing the potential to develop this area into a ‘convention city akin to an Expo’, and the client^▼2 (who had previously regenerated the former Oriental Development Company Daejeon Branch into a complex cultural space) requested a flexible media art exhibition space capable of accommodating new cultural programmes. The Soje-dong railway quarters, established in the 1920s, featured a spatial layout where buildings were situated on the northern side of the plot, with a separate rear courtyard on the southern side. We sought to actively draw upon the spatial characteristics of the railway quarters, namely the continuous outdoor spaces created by the alleyways and courtyards. Our design objective was to establish a village-scale, flexible exhibition platform that connects the village’s alleyways and courtyards into a single exhibition route, offering a new experience with every visit.

The Master Plan for Artsite Soje

When thinking about ‘flexible architecture’, the first reference that came to mind was the Fun Palace (1963) by Cedric Price. He proposed an imaginary structure where the internal spaces and structures responded to its changing programmes such as art, concerts, and crafts, within a large-scale truss frame, reflecting the idea that various cultural activities are installed, dismantled, and evolved through user participation within a large open hall. While the interaction between the building and the user occurred ‘inside the building’ in the Fun Palace, we proposed an expansion of the scope of interaction beyond the building’s boundaries into the ‘surrounding spaces’ of  Soje-dong, scaling it up to the urban level.

On the site owned by the client, there were the old railway quarters and warehouses. To secure the maximum volume for the exhibition hall within the given site, we conceived of a master plan that distributed the public spaces required for the exhibition hall to the surrounding buildings and connected them through the unique alleys and courtyards of  Soje-dong. 

Composed of five buildings in total, the project was named Artsite Soje, emphasising that every element of  the site operates together.

In mid-2024, we first began renovating three of the railway quarters into a reception café and a pet-friendly café. After removing a small room in the railway quarters facing Daedongcheon Stream, we created a long alley in its place to provide an entrance directly from the riverside. To transform what was a previously dark and gloomy atmosphere, the exterior walls of the alley were finished with metal panels, and warm lighting was installed at the entrance. Walking along this alleyway leads visitors to a small courtyard of 7 × 10m. On the left side of the courtyard is the reception café, which functions as both ticket office and lobby. Passing through this café leads to a yard facing the exhibition hall. The 70cm plinth on this yard, formed by the difference in site levels, has been transformed into stepped seating, allowing the space to host events. By placing long wooden benches in between the steps, reflecting the material characteristics of the surrounding wooden buildings, we aimed to provide a place to rest in Soje-dong, where public spaces are scarce. 

Master plan axonometric 

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A Flexible Exhibition Hall with a Responsive Façade

In response to this context, the exhibition hall facing the courtyard was conceived not as a closed typology but as a space that could move fluidly across the boundary between inside and outside. The exhibition hall forms a single volume measuring 11m in height, 10m in width, and 20m in length. Designed with proportions optimised for an ideal acoustic environment, it provides a specialised setting for media art and pop-up events. Unlike conventional media art halls that are isolated from the outside, two sides of this hall are designed to be openable, allowing it to accommodate various types of art and performances. Unlike conventional media art halls that are isolated from the outside, two sides of the hall are designed to be openable so it can accommodate various types of art and performances. Depending on the exhibition, natural light and circulation routes can be flexibly adjusted. When the façade is fully opened, visitors can freely move through the alley connecting the courtyard, the café, and the communal stair on the side of the site.   

While the interior provides an immersive experience, the façade was designed to emphasise openness and variability. Rather than treating the façade simply as protection, we sought a means of heightening the curiosity of passersby. Inspiration came from the concrete kiwa (Korean traditional roof tile) frequently used in the railway quarters of  Soje-dong. Using the cross-section of the tile as a motif, vertical louvers made from folded metal, referencing the materiality of railway tracks, wrap the building’s elevation rather than its roof. The façade is composed of  twelve panels in 1,800 × 4,700mm modules, creating entirely different spatial atmospheres depending on the degree of vertical opening. When the panels are fully closed, the space becomes a blackout environment suitable for immersive media art. Opening the panels alternately creates door-sized openings, allowing a sense of openness and permeability. When all panels are fully opened, a panoramic aperture more than 3m high is formed, and the scene of the exhibition extends outward to the city, while the landscape of  Soje-dong flows into the exhibition hall. Since the motorised façade can be reconfigured according to the exhibition content, the building’s exterior appearance also undergoes diverse transformations. 

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1 The client, Gwansamaeul Co., Ltd., is a subsidiary of CNCITY Energy Co., Ltd. 

2 CNCITY Energy Co., Ltd., CNCITY Foundation, Gwansamaeul Co., Ltd.​