Breath Marks / Urbansociety – 【Download AUTOCAD Blocks,Drawings,Details,3D,PSD】

Architects: Urbansociety
Location: Doosan elementary school, Geumchon, Seoul, South Korea
Lead Architects: Jaechan Yang, Minjung Kim, Minsun Kim, Yoonsung Hwang, TAAE-CARLA Tiimai
Area: 49.8 m2
Project Year: 2018
Photographs: Namsun Lee

Landscape Construction: Lime design Jongsu Kim
Workshop Participants: 800 people of DoksanDong local neighbours and elementary school students, teachers and parents
Client: Geumchon Municipality
Artist Collaborator: Sun Choi

<Breath marks> is a public art project at Doosan elementary school in Doksan, Geumchon, Seoul.

This structure used to function as a garbage incineration plant for school since 1985; due to the changes in waste disposal system, it stopped operating in the late 90s and has now been regenerated into a cultural place for students and local residents. This was a series of <Seoul is museum> public art works by the Seoul city, linked with the municipality Geumchon’s ‘Doksan area regeneration’ project. Jaechan Yang, a director of Urban society was selected from designated contest and the artist Sun Choi participated as a collaborator of the project.

1. DESIGN PROPOSAL
<Breath marks> conceives the idea of transforming an underused incineration plant into a warm local resting place, by infusing people’s breath. The director and the artist proposed the idea of covering its façade with handcrafted tiles, that hold local people’s breaths, collected traces of blown inks. Eventually this visualized breaths become the incineration plant itself.

One of the most important values we pursue is to create a community space, the Blue zone. The goal was to provide a secure environment for in this manufacturing area, but also to make a resting place that school and the neighborhood could share.

– Making iconic landmark of the neighborhood
– Reorganizing unidentified space into a secure and a clean place
– Converting passing-through street into a local’s resting place

2. PARTICIPATION PROGRAM
To bring up the common consensus of this proposal, participatory program was organized. Three stages of the participatory program were run: Briefing session, Survey, and Breath marks workshop. It was coordinated in a sensible way, as the stage got evolved the more target groups participate. In the last stage of the participatory program, Breath marks workshop took place. About 800 people shared their breath onto the canvas during the workshop.

3. CONNECTION LINK
Finally, our ultimate intention was to create a comfortable link that school and the neighborhood could relate to each other, by improving connectivity between the street space and the school’s boundary. Following design elements will help to improve this connectivity.

–       Metal fence and entrance:Switches the part of the school properties into public space and redefines inside and outside of the blue zone, but visually connects those two spaces
–       Landscape lightening:Highlights the artwork and improves public security near high lane and manufacturing area during the night time
–       Faucet:Helps to involve children’s activities with a new resting place, by keeping the original location of the faucet next to the incineration plant
–       Pavement: Symbol of the blue zone. Functions as a part of the school’s new entrance, and a public space