Perma n stant commissioner exhibiter



The practices of architecture and urbanism in Korea, as is the case with any other typical contemporary society, is being detected as closely engaging ever more to its realities, even in a lot more complicated manners than they used to. In this regard we find 'Cities; people, society, architecture', the theme of International Architectural Exhibition La Biennale Di Venezia 2006, parallels our particular concerns to overview the ways current architectural and urban issues involve in and out of our society. Numerous debates and sessions have been preceded among this year's participating architects until they could extract following thematic phrase for the show, 'cumulated time, and instant events in the old places'; in other term, 'perma n stant' (possibly, permanent + instant). As one of the oldest modern metropolitan areas with longer than 600 years of history, Seoul still energetically thrives as a huge buffer where the aged ideas and substances collide every hour against even the most updated ones. This city of self-conflicting nature should consequently integrate largely unpredictable, unexpected weaving patterns of townscapes and lifestyles. So here one could not help but witness all the mutated, temporary versions of urban scenes and events as well as how intriguingly the recognitions and emotions of its occupants work. The city exposes its marginal layer of time-cumulated strata when the innumerable thin layers of instant events incessantly tint on the surface of it. The first part of the theme, perma supposedly epitomizes all the characteristics and fundamental geographic elements the city possesses with relatively constant nature, while the latter part,

n stant could suggest all of its momentary and adaptable images and shifts we see these days. The contents of this year's exhibition in Korean Pavilion would mostly reflect the 'less critical' views or perceptions of the participating architects on what are in progress in the city. Rather, their eyes in this multi-dimensional showcase would maintain quite a fair distance with those phenomena and reserve any judgment, depicting them with more calm and neutral atmosphere. The teamed-up project would be a combined display of large-scale sectional models and moving pictures taken from 5 different sectors of the city that has, for its size and population, so much thrilling history and documents of overcoming its extreme topographies. As one of the five individual projects, a modernist architect shows how he perceives a traditional district and painstakingly adapts his works bit by bit to it through the decade followed by the second one that, under the theme, 'city in a city', diagnoses insecure alterations deriving from the fringe of the city . The third one interprets volatile properties of urban surfaces , while the fourth one, under the theme, 'catalog city', excavates various types of indications of futuristic housing from the ways today's commercial housing suppliers acutely interact with their customers . The last one takes on intricate urban web of artificial nerves and sensory devices and their everyday data, being accumulated and analyzed through its dwellers that couldn't ever avoid being constantly exposed to the systems .

Sung-Yong JOH
Commissioner, Republic of Korea
10. International Architecture Exhibition
La Biennale Di Venezia 2006
 
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