Enter the School of Architecture and you may notice a subtle, black demarcation on the floor of the atrium. Traverse the stairs and you’ll find another precise curvature slicing through the second floor student lounge. Taehyung Kim is responsible for these contours, entitled Insertion which serve as a testing ground for his masters thesis. His investigations surround our phenomenological experience of space and in particular, challenge notions of ‘framing’ as discussed in architecture.
For this particular work Taehyung drew from his fascination with implied geometries. Insertion tests the implication of injecting a cylindrical volume within an open, multi-level space, not in it’s entirety but as fragments. His aspiration is to engage the subconscious through the gestalt effect, forming an imaginary volume within one’s mind. Observed independently, the mass of the volume is collapsed onto a two dimensional surface where the nature of the circle is explicit. However, as each fragment is discovered, the implicit cylindrical volume within the space gradually formulates. Where the cylinder penetrates the elevator, the demarcation on the floor is neither at one level or another but instead sliding past, tracing the perimeter of the implied volume.
Insertion was not only an experience in spatial geometry but became an extensive material study is the capacity of tape. Simple mediums are inherently complex in their execution. If you look closely at Taehyung’s contours each is constructed with considerable precision, either through careful folding of a single strip or making of hundreds of incisions according to the surface properties.
The beginnings of his thesis are rooted in his M1 spent in Rome with Anne Bordeleau, discussing contemporaneity in time and architecture where he began a research on the notion of framing present in the 11th-14th c. western european medieval paintings. Precursor, a series of beautiful collages, evolved from these conversations and begin to dissect the ideologies of ‘framing’ within architecture. Promptly after completing Insertion, Taehyung departed for North Yorkshire, England where he is currently immersed in further field work at Rievaulx Abbey , an early 12th century Cistercian abbey which has fallen into glorious ruin. There he intends to conduct a series of studies amongst the historic structures through various modes of drawing. The studies will inform his thesis design work on the site and further the dialogue of preservation and interrogation of framing.
If you’re interested in Taehyung Kim’s thesis work, he cites the writings of Anne Carson, Juhani Pallasma, Georges Perec, and the architectural work of Carlo Scarpa, Peter Zumthor, Jun Igarashi and Raphael Moneo as points of inspiration. For further reading, he suggests Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky’s Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal , Donald Kunze’s Atlas of Obverse, and Beatriz Colomina’s The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism.
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