[Interview with H.ART Magazine]

Q: Was there a particular moment in your childhood that made you see architecture as something special?

A: “Fragrance.” To me, architecture is both a smell and a scent. Everyone has a place where they spent their summer vacations as a child. For me, it was my grandparents’ countryside home. It was a modest house, yet it felt almost exotic, with mountains behind it and a yard in front. It even had so many landscaped trees and bonsai that it could have been nicknamed a “flower shop.” I remember sitting on the wooden veranda drawing pictures and playing. In the early morning, there was a unique sensation where the cold air seeping through the paper doors met the lingering warmth of the ondol-heated room. During the day, I would stick my fingers into the knots of the wood and feel the smooth texture of the worn wooden floor polished by countless footsteps. In the evening, the smell of firewood burning for cooking would drift from each house. That smell became a kind of clock, telling me it was dinnertime. Among many memories, smells have stayed with me the most and often come back to me. I believe these small memories became a kind of fragrance that has had a deep emotional influence on my approach to architecture.

Q: What kind of “fragrance” has your experience of studying both architecture and philosophy during your school years left with you?

A: Even now, when I meet friends from 20 years ago and we talk about our school days, they remember me as someone who worried a lot. In other words, I might have been quite lost. Until my final year of high school, I struggled with questions like why I needed to study and what I should do in life. Strangely, even at that young age, I was asking myself, “What is my true calling?” As I grew older and those questions gradually became clearer, I stopped being swayed by what others were doing. My school years were a process of searching for what I truly liked, and the time I spent at architecture school, which I chose through that process, was one of the happiest periods of my life.

Q: How would you describe your design style as an architect?

A: I believe the essence of architecture lies in constructiveness. What distinguishes architecture from other forms of art is that changes in function and form are grounded in structural constructiveness. From this perspective, I value the constructive nature of architecture and the material consistency that accompanies it. Every site contains its own story, and through the process of interpreting it, structural characteristics emerge through construction. I translate the meaningful stories embedded in a place into architecture through the constructiveness of materials and craftsmanship in detail. In one sentence, I would describe my architecture as “constructive craftsmanship armed with digital tools.”

“Viewing architecture through otherness via philosophy”

 I remember attending lectures organized by the Korean Artists Federation. There were lectures by numerous professors, including Professor Shim Gwang-hyun of Korea National University of Arts. At that time, I constantly sought out lectures on philosophy and architecture that I could not find in my school’s architecture classes. For one or two years, I searched for classes that I could truly understand internally, rather than ones based on simple memorization and note-taking. Even at a young age, I tried to view architecture as an “other.” It’s like the feeling of looking at your own country’s architecture when you’re abroad. Typical university education in architecture did not give us the opportunity to view it through this lens of otherness. It was difficult to understand architecture from the perspective of other disciplines. However, by double majoring in philosophy, I was able to step outside and observe architecture as an outsider. I had the chance to see architecture through another field. Some people studying philosophy even advised me to “forget architecture and focus only on philosophy,” but in hindsight, that somewhat reckless and blind challenge was a very important period for me.

“Learning how to see objects in everyday life”

 One day, I spent the entire day reading in the library, but there were three passages I simply could not understand. I read them over and over again, but some sentences just wouldn’t make sense. Taking a break, I shifted my gaze from the books I had been immersed in to the sunset outside the window, and for some reason, I stared at it for a long time. Suddenly, the shadows cast by the sunset and the scenery of the buildings felt very unfamiliar. At that moment, I was reading a chapter from Martin Heidegger’s “Being and Time” that I couldn’t understand at all. I kept wondering, “What does it mean that ‘Being reveals itself through beings, and beings exist through Being…’?” Then, looking at the houses and the sunset outside, I felt that the scene resembled what the book was trying to say. Phenomenology, too, involves suspending judgment about what we usually see and practicing seeing things differently. Perhaps that was when I glimpsed the possibility of what philosophy could be. As those moments accumulated, I came to think that philosophy is about learning how to perceive things in everyday life on your own. Philosophy classes were like dipping my feet into a vast ocean. But if I had only understood the ocean intellectually, I would never have remembered its texture and scent.

Q: What was your experience like studying in France and working at world-renowned architectural firms?

A: In Korea, philosophy education often focused on questions like, “What were Socrates and Aristotle trying to say?” In contrast, philosophy in France was about everyday life and organizing concepts within that life. If I had studied only architecture, I might have gained just one thing, but with the foundation of philosophy, I was able to gain two or three times more. It was a time of expansion. It wasn’t about grand theories, but rather about how philosophical interest could extend into architecture and other areas, helping me establish my own perspective on how I view objects in everyday life. It was a time of insight that I could truly enjoy.

“Meeting Shigeru Ban”

 Looking back, my time studying in France was very difficult. I went there on a government scholarship without much preparation, and instead of studying architecture in a typical French architecture school, I wanted to study “materials.” During my studies, my goal was to deeply explore materials. For that reason, I left for Nancy to pursue what I truly wanted to study, rather than attending a conventional architecture school. Because I loved what I was doing, things worked out better than expected. Around the time I was finishing school, I persistently contacted Shigeru Ban’s Paris office, which was preparing for the Pompidou-Metz project, because I wanted to work there. After several months, I finally received a reply. However, the reply said, “We’ll give you one week—prepare a presentation and come.” After what felt like a dream presentation, hearing “Start work next Monday” made me incredibly happy. Looking back, it was quite reckless, because I had already given up my place in Nancy and had nowhere to go if it didn’t work out. I had no Plan B.

 To be honest, that’s when the hardship really began. I had no idea how to survive on the international stage, and my struggles started there. My colleagues spoke three languages fluently and worked with incredible professionalism. Watching them, I realized that as someone from Korea with nothing but passion, the only way to survive in such an environment was to work tirelessly. I took English lessons every weekend and worked harder than anyone during the week. That’s what it takes to survive there. My commute felt like hell, and the work was so demanding that I never once thought the Eiffel Tower, visible from the fifth floor of the Pompidou Center where the office was located, looked beautiful. During my time at Shigeru Ban’s office, I learned about the lineage of art on a global stage, gained practical experience, developed a realistic perspective, and also acquired languages like English and French, which became a great help during my 7–8 years in France.

Q: Have you ever been deeply moved by another architect’s work?

A: Like many architects, I went on numerous architectural pilgrimages across Europe. I traveled throughout Scandinavia following the works of Alvar Aalto, and during my pilgrimage of Carlo Scarpa, I visited Venice, Vicenza, Verona, and more, dedicating time to exploring the works of a single architect.

"Carlo Scarpa Pilgrimage – Possessed by Another Architect’s Work"

 When visiting great works like the Brion Cemetery in Treviso, I felt so fulfilled that I didn’t even need to eat. It was as if I had become the architect who designed those buildings—almost like being possessed. I could understand how each detail came about and grasp the reasons behind them. Those moments were more enjoyable than any architectural study I had done before. I truly didn’t feel the need for food. I viewed architecture from multiple perspectives as an outsider and continuously observed the moving landscapes along the pilgrimage route. I was seeing architecture in a much more three-dimensional way. I learned how to understand architecture through all senses—smell, touch, and more—and through those experiences, I once again felt the sincerity of the architect. At the same time, it made me humble. The more I learned, the more I realized how I had once tried to judge things I didn’t fully understand.

Q: After working in France and the UK, you returned to Korea. Could you tell us about the characteristics of your firm, Joho Architecture?

A: We begin by considering what kind of practical benefits a client can gain. We interpret the stories that the land can tell through materials—the details of those materials and the aura embedded within them. The “story the land can tell” becomes the story of the client’s business and also the story of my architecture.

 I think the role of Joho Architecture is like that of a novelist who writes on behalf of the client. My architecture is shaped through a new perspective—viewing things as an “other”—and is expressed in humanistic, philosophical, and architectural language. Rather than saying, “This is my style, so I will design it this way,” I focus on asking, “Given this story, what if it looked like this?” The resulting architecture reveals itself through the characteristics of materials. It is not merely a formal trait. It is similar to the way a film unfolds its narrative through sequences. The difference is that architecture uses the element of “land.”

 We are seeing more clients who have the vision of a generation that longs for something new. There is a growing need to expand and connect different domains. Still, there is too much tendency to divide fields—architecture is architecture, art is art—and to seek answers within those frames. What we need is to break those frames.

2017.10

Jeonghoon Lee

[This Interview was commissioned by H.ART Magazine]