korean pavilion envisions future eco-cultural revolution at venice architecture biennale

South KoreaN PAVILION AT VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2023

South Korea‘s national pavilion will participate in the upcoming Venice Architecture Biennale which will run from May 20 to November 26, 2023, with its ‘2086: Together How?’. Curated by Artistic Directors Soik Jung and Kyong Park, the exhibition assumes that 2086 is a pivotal year for humanity as we will be called upon to confront fundamental changes due to the climate emergency. As a result, the Korean Pavilion takes viewers into hypothetical scenarios through both a video game and physical installations where they will face a new paradigm of living in order to respond to the immediate crisis.

For ‘2086: Together How?’, architects, community leaders, and artists joined forces, creating a dialogue and thus proposing solutions that might endure current and future environmental crises until the crucial year of 2086. Apart from digital interaction, the exhibition hosts a series of multidisciplinary installations encompassing photographs, drawings, models, video, and architectural installations, inviting audiences to imagine an ‘eco-cultural revolution through a critical reassessment of our capitalist, globalist, and colonial history.’

Measure Island, 2023, digital print on paper, courtesy of NHDM Architects

a reflective and restrained life in a new ecosphere

The Korean Pavilion (see more here) focuses on three small communities with different populations and histories involved in active regeneration projects in South Korea. These are inside the global city of Incheon; the historic colonial center in the mid-size city of Gunsan; and in the rural areas largely resided by migrant workers in the Gyeonggi Province.

‘Each community is a case study which utilizes the community leader’s deep knowledge of the place and the architect’s spatial analysis to evaluate its current state, and propose site-specific future scenarios leading up to 2086. For instance, in the case of Gunsan, practitioners have explored how to work with abandoned homes and buildings to return the old city’s urban landscape to a more natural state,’ explained Soik Jung. ‘Each project is motivated by central concerns of how to cope with decaying urban centers and rural villages due to centuries of uneven capitalist development thinking. As such, these projects are about how the past can be connected with the future, and how localism can reshape globalism.’

Take The 4 Line, 2023, courtesy of NHDM Architects

Kyong Park added, ‘2086: Together How? loops back to our Faustian ideology of progress and how we have
sought unlimited material pleasure through industrialization, colonization, and globalization. The exhibition
asserts that not only will the environmental crisis force us to change, but it will be our only chance to make a
better eco-cultural paradigm for the future.’

Wongok, 2023, digital print on paper, courtesy of NHDM Architects