Shimwoojae, together with Bulgeowon, was designed as a training center and guest house for Vatech. As an architect, this project was a profound exploration of how to overcome a site slope reaching 11 meters and how to compose architectural masses in harmony with the natural landscape. Built with a one-year interval, Shimwoojae and Bulgeowon required diverse architectural considerations—from the approach of placing masses relative to the road to the perspective of connecting two separate gardens, and the task of maintaining a service road while ensuring the gap between the two structures felt seamless and comfortable.

For Shimwoojae, it was crucial to maximize the subterranean neighborhood living facilities according to the program while establishing a clear relationship between the upper-level training center and the residential quarters. A key focus was how to harmoniously relate public areas, such as the book cafe and Private Dining Rooms (PDR), with the private spaces above on this sloped terrain, and how to link them naturally through architectural volume. In other words, I concentrated on how to stably distribute hierarchical spaces within a single building and maintain a sense of proportion between the building and the terraced landscape that inevitably arises from the site's slope.

Furthermore, to maximize the diverse connectivity between interior and exterior spaces, I incorporated eaves of varying proportions, terraces, and rooftop gardens on each floor. By placing multi-layered terraces at the intersection of landscape and architecture, I sought to establish a neutral boundary with the surrounding environment.

In the Korean landscape, where the majority of the land is mountainous, understanding levels and constructing them formally in connection with landscaping to create diverse spatial experiences is of utmost importance. Furthermore, placing architectural masses stably to match the landscape levels—while considering both the "viewing" and "being viewed" perspectives—is a fundamental skill essential to Korean architecture. Shimwoojae and Bulgeowon can be seen as archetypes and modern interpretations of the fundamentals that can be built upon Korean soil. The composition of landscaping following three-dimensional masses found in Soswaewon, created by Yang San-bo, and the organic combination of architectural spaces seen in the Secret Garden of Changdeokgung Palace, served as the prototypes for Bulgeowon and Shimwoojae.