SPACE February 2025 (No. 687)
Pillar diagram of The Pillar Suit (2021)
Shin Jaehee principal, Jaehee Shin MSc Arch ETH SIA, Lee Dammy principal, Flora and Fauna × Ryul Song co-principal, SUPA Schweitzer Song
Ornament
Ryul Song (Song): The pillars in Lee Dammy’s The Pillar Suit (2021) are decorative. In architecture, ornamentation has traditionally been viewed as non-essential. As is well known, Adolf Loos as well as Peter Eisenman approached ornamentation as a symbolic device through which to differentiate cultural and practical aspects, rather than considering it to be fundamental to architecture. However, in Lee’s writing, there is a connection between ornamentation and queer thinking. Queerness, as a concept, extends beyond sociological distinctions of gender to include sexual identity. It understands human nature in a very complex way by resisting or transcending modern binary concepts. If we assume that this way of thinking encompasses Lee’s understanding of architecture and decoration, it can be inferred that, for Lee, architecture is not a singular entity but a complex and multivalent one, and ornamentation also possesses an alternative means of operation to traditional grammar.
Lee Dammy (Lee): Defining ornamentation is undoubtedly a significant challenge for me, but at the same time, I don’t want to strictly define it and thereby diminish its meaning. I am more interested about the reaction evoked by the image of ornamentation or the responsive nature of ornamental imagery. While some ornamentation creates concrete symbols through regional or religion-based imagery, the images of our time are far more complex. This complexity leads me to continuously explore and experiment with what kind of ornamentation might be possible in this context.
Song: How are imagery and architecture interconnected?
Lee: It seems to involve connecting images to the ways of thinking we should consider in our era and reflecting on whether these attributes can be incorporated into architecture. My approach to ornamentation embodies both resistance and aspiration regarding the present time—resisting the industrial aspects while aspiring toward the personal production and collection of images. I think of ways to embed these in architectural ornamentation. However, establishing to one-to-one anologies or a clear connection between meaning and aesthetic outcome inevitably accompanies errors. As a result, ornamentation in my architecture deliberately avoids clear definitions, often appearing abrupt, exaggerated, or a mix of contrasting elements. At the same time, I question whether my work can tell the story it’s trying to tell, because both the meaning and the result of the ornaments can be messy. Nevertheless, I find myself unwilling to deliver meanings with precision, instead embracing chance and the imcomprehensible. I hope that the personal images I observe in my surroundings quietly find their way into architecture. For instance, motifs drawn from flora and fauna, non-productive, irrational, and undulating impressions. These are the elements I hope to integrate and activate within my work.
Song: The stone pillars in the Craft and Architecture (2016) proposal for the Seoul Museum of Craft Art does not seem to be structural. Should these stone elements, which resemble pillars, be interpreted as ornamentation?
Lee: The stones in Craft and Architecture are drawn from various references and sources, including the works of Valerio Olgiati and Lina Bo Bardi, as well as inspirations like dolphins, ambiguously shaped wood that preexisted on the site, and so on. Much like finding shapes in clouds, we adapted lines from other buildings, as well as from flora, fauna, and objects, in ways that were not excessively challenging to construct. While I do not view the concept of ornamentation negatively, as something merely added, I am conscious of the dichotomy between structure and ornamentation, necessity and addition, and the contrast between masculine and feminine, as well as industrial interior ornamentation. Additionally, I consider how ornamentation reflects the societal tendency of Koreans to be concerened on appearances or exteriors, addressing this in architectural terms. However, such perspectives are not always fully expressed in a single work. In The Pillar Suit, I simplified everything apart from the framework, adding new elements with images that conveyed volume without being too difficult to construct. Pillars and partition walls are often easily categorised based on whether they serve a structural purpose, but my approach was to insert ambiguous volumes that are neither clearly pillars nor partition walls, that obscure sightlines in an indeterminate manner. Compared to my other works, the origin of the lines in The Pillar Suit is not multi-layered. However, I focused on the fact that the pillar arrangement slightly changes and the sense of spatial units becomes disrupted as it is located at the end of a school building with a regular pillar arrangement. I aimed to make the pillars appear as if they exist independently, rather than as part of a system that divides spaces into units.
Song: Suits were put on the pillars. Suit also serve the function of protecting the body, which raises the question of what function attire serves in The Pillar Suit.
Shin Jaehee (Shin): Historically, there have been pillars that serve different roles from those that follow the modernist approach of structural function. An example is the stucco marble pillars, which were made to look like marble by mixing plaster and paint on the exterior of hollow pillar frames. Given our extensive exposure to postmodern architecture, we may perceive pillars that do not bear structural loads as somewhat unfamiliar. On the other hand, in the medieval period, memory was valued over intuition, as distinguished by postmodernist perspectives. Actions such as painting or celebrating were considered significant because of their connection to memory. My ornamentation is also closely attached to actions associated with memory. In the sense that Lee’s ornamentation distinguishes itself from productive lines and connects to something inefficient, it seems to loosely resonate with my approach to ornamentation.
Song: During the modernist period, most other forms of art were moving away from functionality, but architecture placed an emphasis on functionality, rationalising architectural practices. Without function, things were perceived as unproductive. However, it is difficult to interpret the works of Lee and Shin wihtin this framework. The ornamental pillars and floral decorations on a farmhouse reveal elements like imagery, symbolism, and time, creating spatial experiences that inspire new ways of thinking. This ornamentation goes beyond the discourse of whether something is beautiful or not, or whether it is an addition or not. Instead, it challenges existing norms and invites us to see them anew. Although these works are translated into the language of ornamentation, they represent a broader or entirely different category of ornamentation compared to traditional concepts. Thus, it seems necessary to distinguish this from the term ‘ornamentation’ as it has been used since the twentieth century, when its meaning became fixed.
Speicher
Time
Shin: My plan drawing approach is also used by medieval architects. I started using it to explore whether individually existing elements are coordinated within a single context and fulfilling their roles by drawing both two-dimensional plans and three-dimensional spaces together. In the existing building, I find principles within elements like windows of different sizes, which may appear unattractive from an architect’s perspective, and maintain them while adding new elements to create an integrated rhythm. For the Farmhouse Atelier with a View of Speicher (2024 –), I considered a colour palette that respects the kitschy wooden finishes of the farmhouse’s interior, while making the space appear elegant. Some architects eliminate or contrast with existing colours to assert their presence, while heritage preservationists often obsess over maintaining original colours exactly as they are. In navigating between these two approaches, I developed the methodology of multiple authorship, which allows for a voice without excluding either side.
Park Jiyoun (Park): For the Farmhouse Atelier with a View of Speicher, is the sense of indirectly experiencing the old grain silo, and the feeling of having one’s own space as Virginia Woolf describes in A Room of One’s Own (1929), a primary consideration?
Shin: Correct. First and foremost, I needed a workshop where I could focus on work for three to four days. While the grain silo can be seen through the windows of the living room, bedroom, and corridor on the first floor of the farmhouse, it cannot be seen from the workshop itself due to the roof. Therefore, it was important to create a sense of the grain silo within the workshop. I studied where the centre of ornamentation lies on the wooden panels of the grain silo’s exterior and at what angles they are arranged. Unlike modern architecture, which can be divided with consistent rules and precision, the placement here feels organically beautiful. In Switzerland, referencing other works is a common practice in architecture, so I am accustomed to interpreting and using references in my own way. But i am more interested in architecture that evolves from the past as opposed to referential architecture. I want to work on connecting existing elements with contemporary narratives rather than excluding them.
Song: It seems you often take measurements of not only the spaces you work on but also the spaces you stay in.
Shin: That might be because much of my work has involved existing buildings. Additionally, throughout European history, most women were distanced from the act of constructing buildings itself. However, in recent years, there has been an effort among historians and theorists to include in the architectural narrative the acts of women observing landscapes and buildings during travel or daily life, writing about these experiences, or actively maintaining and sharping homes and gardens. These ‘feminine’ acts of architecture, such as spending time in and observing spaces, are something I wanted to understand and incorporate into architectural storytelling.
Song: I also measure details, such as the protrusions of a door, but I’m uncertain whether this is because I am a female architect. On another note, Heidi Bucher applied wax and fabric to the surfaces of her home and peeled them off to reconstruct the space elsewhere. It was a project that valued time over material and reassembled traces of the past. Similarly, Farmhouse Atelier with a View of Speicher values time over material.
Femininity
Song: Humans are already socially categorised in various ways, such as queer, disabled, female, and male. In such a society, the architectural discussion should focus on how each existence is represented in an equal manner, rather than in the uniform way as it is now. If based on equal thinking, systems, and construction processes, more diverse and unique results will be produced. Femininity has often been treated as something weak, and in my generation, in order to survive in the field of architecture, we had to hide our femininity, making it difficult for the uniqueness of a female sensibility to be reflected in our work. If, like the name of Lee’s office Flora and Fauna, which foregrounds plants and animals, femininity were also more prominently expressed in architectural work, it could profoundly shift the paradigm of architecture. Progress won’t come easily because of the power of vested rights, but it’s worth pursuing.
Lee: While I don’t consciously divide people into male and female when practicing architecture, I do recognise that both the field of architecture and society at large are fundamentally underpinned by patriarchy. The architecture I envision is not pure or singular, yet I often find conventional architecture to be flat. My reason for distinguishing the ornamentation in The Pillar Suit from conventional ornamentation stems from this awareness, which is deeply informed by a feminist perspective.
Song: The issues arising from patriarchy are very complex and cannot be resolved in a uniform way. In fact, the very act of trying to address various issues uniformly is itself a patriarchal mindset, which has ultimately led to the creation of standards for what is considered normal. We need to move beyond the binary thinking of normal and abnormal. Additionally, I believe that understanding queer, disabled, female, and male humans should be prioritised, while it is also important to consider non-human entities, including animals and objects. This is not to say that non-humans are unimportant, but rather to express concern that talking about non-humans without understanding humans might be seen as following a trendy way of thinking. Meanwhile, although Shin mentioned finding principles in existing buildings, I wonder if such principles truly exist. It might have been an act of instinctively finding and connecting something to create rules, which is an attitude associated with the production aspect of architecture. While terms like recycling and reuse are being discussed, I believe that the most important ethical stance for architects today is to refuse. In other words, choosing not to build. Architects need to think about what they can do without physically creating.
Shin: Constructed architecture still holds meaning. Over the past decade, I have built up experiences for creating architecture, and physically realised buildings can be read as multiple layers simultaneously. My role as an editor for Women Writing Architecture is motivated by a desire to build architecture that aligns with contemporary issues and to absorb insights, much like an antenna.
Lee: I also find meaning in the act of physically creating. I place great importance on connecting relationships between objects and materials. To the question of why we continue to build when so many buildings already exist, I would respond that while there may be a quantitative surplus, there is a qualitative deficiency. Architecture is not only something physically new but also something that influences culture. Just as art critic Nicolas Bourriaud stated that art plays a role in shaping perception, I think about the influence of architecture. For this reason, I believe we must continue to create. In the studio architecture of ‘other bodies’, a theme of imagining a different owner of architecutre, not Le Corbusier’s Modulor Man, but someone else, was proposed. Students were asked to design under the assumption that the owner of architecture could be a non-white man, another kind of human, or even a non-human entity. While the concept might have been unfamiliar to them theoretically, students embraced it naturally in practice. I believe that such shifts in thinking are not fleeting trends but are part of a soft and expansive transformation in the social landscape. As architects, I think it is our responsibility to respond architecturally to these social changes.
Multiplicity
Park: A feminine or minority perspective is about sensing and thinking from the periphery, not the centre. While the centre may be singular, the periphery cannot be. In this sense, the periphery is always numerically greater than the centre and is virtually infinite. Lee and Shin are constantly striving to develop this peripheral thinking and build architecture through expansive, interconnected thought. The results, built through multi-layered thinking, are difficult to define with a single characteristic or language. Lee’s ornamentation connected to imagery, Shin’s walls drawn in floor plans, multiple authorship, and evolving architecture all belong to the will to construct the periphery.
Song: Defining the construction of the periphery through isolated examples, a singular architectural language, or a specific attitude is impractical. The nature of the periphery, originating from feminine thought, is complex and inherently diverse, resisting any attempt to distill it into a single meaning or category. This multiplicity, in itself, could even be considered its defining characteristic.
Shin: Discussing desires, ongoing projects, and interests without a conclusion, like this conversation, is actually connected to femininity. Just as plant roots connect with other roots underground in ways we cannot see, many topics are derived and interconnected. It is not a step-by-step process of thinking, from big ideas to small ones. Architectural education has also taught this step-by-step thinking process and the attitude of concluding that something is correct, which seems to suppress complex emotions and thoughts. Architecture imbued with femininity, or femininity itself are difficult to explain in a singular language and likely requires significant energy and curiosity from the listener.
Lee: Even so, if we were to draw a conclusion from this conversation, I would say it is about maintaining a sense of connection. This means not seeing architectural work as a project itself but considering the multifaceted aspects of the work, including the processes before and after construction and the involvement of various authors, examining and revisiting them, and leaving these layers embedded within the work itself.
Song: In the twentieth century, architecture was designed for a single moment. Now, we need to deisgn time▼1. As mentioned earlier, a building can no longer be reduced to a single language. It must embrace multiplicity, just like our lives.
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1 Ryul Song in Labyrinths 1: References and Citations states that ‘Architecture must be understood not as a singular object but as the relationships among all things. Architecture should be understood not as building design but as social design. Architecture should not exist to function but to influence. It should exist not to ogranise but to provide possibilities. It should exist not to offer something but to enable something. Architecture must never be understood as a singular result but always as an ongoing process. Only through such redefinitions can we understand architecture not merely as space design but as time ‘Time Design’. From the very beginning, all design must be conceptualised with time in mind- time that enables change, adaptation, transformation, expansion, reudction, maintenance, disappearance, metamorphosis, amalgamation, uncertainty, flexibility, fluidity, incompleteness, progress, continuity, temporality, and improvement.’
