A void within another. The Outdoor Room by Frank Barkow and Salazar Sequero Medina
27/10/2023.
[Seoul] South Korea
metalocus, JORGE MARTINEZ
metalocus, JORGE MARTINEZ
Description of project by Frank Barkow and Salazar Sequero Medina
THE OUTDOOR ROOM is a pavilion for the 2023 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, built in Songhyeon Green Plaza. It is an architectural device to sense land and city. The simplicity of the square structure aims to capture the complexity of the environmental and cultural history which endows great significance to the opening of its site to the public. Once an ancient pine forest attached to a royal palace, in the second half of the 20th century Songhyong-dong was a representative site of American military occupation.
The site was a void, enclosed by walls and isolated from the rapidly growing urban environment around it. As the walls come down and the park opens to the public, becoming available to the citizens of Seoul, it remains enclosed by the density of the city surrounding it. Therefore, The Outdoor Room is a void within a void which frames the history of change for land and city. Its construction assembles materials which have been repurposed from another structure designed by Diagonal Thoughts. The lifecycle of these elements transcends the structure itself as they will carry on after the biennial closes and become adapted to a new site.
Within the limits of its current form, visitors will discover a garden of native plants and a chimney which reverberates with the wind. The Outdoor Room will feel domestic and familiar, though strangely abstract. It will be a place of arrival, and a place to stay for a while and sense the sky, the mountains, and the tops of buildings.
Barkow Leibinger’s work is realized over a wide range of scales and building types including building for workplace (industry, office, and master-planning), cultural, housing, event spaces, exhibitions and installations in the public realm internationally. Important milestones are amongst others the Biosphere in Potsdam, Germany, the Customer and Administration Building , the Gate House and the Campus Restaurant in Ditzingen, Germany and the Trutec Building in Seoul. Recently completed buildings include the Tour Total office high-rise in Berlin and an apartment and hotel complex in passive house standard in Freiburg, Germany.
Their work has been shown at the Architecture Biennale Venice 2008 and 2014, at the Marrakech Biennale 2012 and is included in the permanent collections of MoMA, New York, and the Deutsches Architektur Museum, Frankfurt. Barkow Leibinger have won three National AIA Honor Awards for Architecture and the prestigious Marcus Prize for Architecture, Milwaukee, recognizing emerging talent in the field for design excellence and innovation, as well a Global Holcim Innovation Award for sustainability.
Frank Barkow. Born in Kansas City, USA, 1957. Bachelor of Architecture, Montana State University, 1982. Master of Architecture, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, 1990. Visiting Critic, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York and Rome, 1990. Unit Master, Architectural Association, London, 1995-98. The Arthur Gensler Visiting Professor of Architecture Cornell University, Ithaca, 2003. Cass Gilbert Visiting Professor, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 2004. Visiting Professor, State Academy of Art and Design, Stuttgart, Germany, 2005-06. Visiting Professor, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, USA, 2008, 04, 00. Visiting Professor, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, School of Architecture & Urban Planning, USA, 2008. Visiting Professor, EPFL Écoles Polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, 2010. Barkow Leibinger, Berlin, Germany, Since 1993.
Regine Leibinger. Born in Stuttgart, Germany, 1963. Diploma, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, 1989. Master of Architecture, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, USA, 1991. Assistant Professor, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, 1993–97. Unit Master, Architectural Association, London, England, 1997–98. Guest Professor, Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg, Germany, 1999–2000. Visiting Professor, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, USA, 2000, 04. Professor for Building Construction and Design, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany Since 2006. Member of the ’Visiting Committees’, MIT Department of Architecture, Cambridge, USA, Since 2011. Barkow Leibinger Architects, Berlin, Germany, Since 1993.