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When I was an architecture school student, I wanted to become someone who would think differently from others.

People tend to attribute a certain ‘architectural philosophy’ to successful architects, but I have always found the practice of self-praise uncomfortable.

So while my classmates referred to their school projects as their ‘artwork’, I always called them ‘homework’.

To be able to think differently from others, one must first develop one’s own way of looking at things.

I avoided reading books written by other architects because I did not want to end up as an imitator. Instead, I turned to books that influenced these architects.

These books were in the fields of modern physics, philosophy, psychology, and Christian theology.

I was not able to gather much from the abstruse philosophy texts; instead, I was drawn more often toward works in modern physics.

Among those books, Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism had a deep impact on me.

When I was a high school student, philosophy and physics were taught in separate classes as completely different subjects.

However, Capra’s book showed me that philosophy and the sciences – regardless of era and location – have always been mutually aligned, except in their explanatory methodology.

This insight that the same human genius can be expressed differently according to the field enlightened me in two ways.

First, I realised that it is possible to study holistically across disciplines, and, second, I realised that it is also possible to apply this interdisciplinary approach via architecture.

This gave me the courage to refine the various things that I picked up in college into architectural expressions.

As I was preparing for graduate school after military service, ‘cyberspace’ was featured as the cover page for TIME magazine sometime in the mid-1990s.

At that time, I wondered why one would call internet homepages – which were mostly text-based back then – displayed on computer screens, ‘spaces’.

Due to its slower speed in those early years, the internet was mostly filled with scholarly texts with occasional red-tinted hyperlinks for moving between pages.

As I continued to wonder about the term ‘space’, I eventually concluded that ‘space is a product of consciousness created with data processed by the human brain.’

From then on, I conceived space as information. I realised that ‘space is not an absolute physical quantity, but a unity of memory.’

As I began to see space as information, I could understand and read offline and online spaces. However, this was not yet enough for me to do proper architectural design.

After many years, I concluded that architecture is about using space to ‘adjust relationships’.

Architectural elements such as walls, windows, roofs, doors, and staircases adjust relationships between people.

A wall separates people if it stands in between them, but a window creates a visual connection. A door on a wall introduces a traversable physical relationship.

Staircases connect spaces divided by height. I realised that architectural design is about orchestrating relationships using architectural elements.

Today, I see architectural design as analysing and deciphering the world as data and adjusting the observed relationships through architectural elements.

The aim of my architecture is to realise ‘restoration of relationships’ under the premise that a good architecture is a ‘harmonising architecture’.

There are two types of relationships: the relationship between people, and the relationship between people and nature.

A healthy relationship is one that maintains an ‘appropriate distance’.

No matter how much one likes nature, one cannot sleep out in the damp outdoors.

But one can enjoy nature through the window even while staying indoors, separated from nature.

Or one could engage with nature more actively by relaxing on a chair by the terrace.

While we build walls to protect each family member’s privacy, we also build doors for interpersonal interactions and windows for engagements with nature outdoors.

We can also add a window facing the hall for visual communication between family members.

If one wants to be left alone, one can always shut the window and close the curtains.

I understand space by dividing it into three types of information: ‘void, symbol, and human activity’.

And I understand three different kinds of relationships: the physical, visual, and psychological relationships.

Ultimately, architectural design for me is akin to putting down ‘information’ as ‘words’ belonging to a ‘sentence structure’ that I call ‘relationship’.

The theme and purpose of the essay is to ‘make the world more harmonious’.

Unlike painters, architects can only express their ideas if they have a client.

The site given to the architect is like the white canvas for the painter, and the given programme is the thing that needs to be drawn.

I begin my work by analysing a given site’s information to look for productive energies.

A nice park landscape in front of the site would be a good energy that can be used.

There are bad energies as well: loud surrounding noise is a negative energy that must be resolved with walls.

Then I look for the most optimal way to simplify and adjust the given programmes in terms of their functions.

This is because the simplest design is the most economic answer, and the most economic answer is the most eco-friendly.

For this purpose, unnecessary ornaments are avoided, and curves are minimised. Colours are minimally used as well.

Too much colour is like unnecessary decorations that distract the user’s thoughts. Hence, I tend to stick with whites in my designs.

When needed, I sometimes use bricks or locally sourced rocks to design architecture that blends into its surroundings.

An architecture that blends into its surroundings is, in my view, the best architecture.

In Korean, the word ‘Architecture (建築)’ is formed of two characters that mean ‘establish (建)’ and ‘pile up (築)’, respectively.

This shows that architecture is about establishing or piling up something.

When we look at the hanok as an example, a rock is first piled up to make the embankment, then pillars are established on the embankment, and roof tiles are piled up again.

As the word itself suggests, architecture is indeed about establishing and stacking.

However, such an explanation only touches the surface.

While architecture appears like a series of tangible physical activities such as establishing and piling, what we actually build through these activities is an intangible ‘empty space’.

The reason why we build empty spaces is to allow people to go in and use them. Hence, the ultimate aim of architecture is making empty spaces. But it also must not end here.

Architecture is often shared by multiple users in complex ways.

Ever since human beings came to live together in a city, architecture became a task of adjusting and composing complex human relationships.

Architecture is fundamentally a ‘humanistic’ activity that is inseparable from humanity.

We have a slogan on our website that says ‘Architecture is to Design Relationship.

We seek to create harmony among people and with nature through new architectural visions’. Our works are physical culminations of this vision.