The installation by the winners of this year’s MoMA Young Architects Program in Seoul has just been revealed. Shin Hyung-Chul’s Shinslab Architecture has launched the office’s spatial proposal for the coveted honour in one of the South Korean capital’s most important cultural institutions.
The structure, created in collaboration with the Seoul outpost of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) and entitled ‘Temp’L’, is cleverly designed from the recycled steel parts of an old ship.
Flagging up the beauty – and potential – of recycling, the piece also illustrates its creator’s fascination with vessels. Having spent his childhood in Europe, Shin was always inspired by large ships that appear to float ‘in and out of Venice’s exquisite buildings’. The architect took those images and combined them with Le Corbusier’s modernist teachings, that often drew parallels between modern architecture and ocean liners.
At the same time, the piece also represents industrialisation, with the ship as one of the 20th century’s largest structures and symbols of power and technology.
Inside, surfaces are rusty and rough, contrasted by the overall structure’s smooth, curved geometries, that hint to the hull of a ship. Conceived as an outdoor pavilion, featuring seating and planning, the installation will serve as a resting area for the museum’s visitors.
Offering an opportunity to young architecture offices to showcase their work to an international audience, MoMA’s Young Architects Program operates in Italy, Turkey, Chile and South Korea; 2016 is its third year in Seoul and its 17th worldwide edition. Temp’L will be on show in the museum courtyard of MMCA, Seoul until 3 October.
The installation is created out of the recycled parts of an old ship, a partial response to Shinslab director Shin Hyung-Chul’s fascination with the vessels and waterways of Venice.
The piece, explain the architects, combines the beauty of recycling, the power of industrialisation and the modernist teachings of Le Corbusier.
The smooth and curvy structure’s interiors are a combination of rough and rusty surfaces. The structure will serve as a pavilion, where the museum’s visitors can rest.
INFORMATION
Temp’L will be on view at MMCA Seoul until 6 October. For more information, visit MoMA's website.
ADDRESS
MMCA
30 Samcheong-ro, Sogyeok-dong,
Jongno-gu, Seoul 03062
-
Put these emerging artists on your radarThis crop of six new talents is poised to shake up the art world. Get to know them now
-
Dining at Pyrá feels like a Mediterranean kiss on both cheeksDesigned by House of Dré, this Lonsdale Road addition dishes up an enticing fusion of Greek and Spanish cooking
-
Creased, crumpled: S/S 2025 menswear is about clothes that have ‘lived a life’The S/S 2025 menswear collections see designers embrace the creased and the crumpled, conjuring a mood of laidback languor that ran through the season – captured here by photographer Steve Harnacke and stylist Nicola Neri for Wallpaper*
-
Join our tour of Taikaka House, a slice of New Zealand in SeoulTaikaka House, meaning ‘heart-wood’ in Māori, is a fin-clad, art-filled sanctuary, designed by Nicholas Burns
-
Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2024: meet the practicesIn the Wallpaper* Architects Directory 2024, our latest guide to exciting, emerging practices from around the world, 20 young studios show off their projects and passion
-
Studio Heech transforms a Seoul home, nodding to Pierre Chareau’s Maison De VerreYoung South Korean practice Studio Heech joins the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2024, our annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios
-
Architect Byoung Cho on nature, imperfection and interconnectednessSouth Korean architect Byoung Cho’s characterful projects celebrate the quirks of nature and the interconnectedness of all things
-
2023 Seoul Biennale of architecture invites visitors to step into the outdoorsSeoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2023 has launched in the South Korean capital, running themes around nature and land through the lens of urbanism
-
Tadao Ando’s ‘Space of Light’, a meditation pavilion, opens in South KoreaTadao Ando’s ‘Space of Light’ pavilion opens at Museum SAN in South Korea
-
Seosaeng House is a holiday home designed to capture the rising sunSeosaeng House, Studio Weave’s first project in South Korea, is a clifftop holiday home perfectly designed to capture a new day dawning over the East Sea
-
K-Pop hit factory gets a futuristic new office in SeoulUNStudio completes headquarters building for leaders in K-Pop scene YG Entertainment, in Seoul
