Moai Building

Project Details

Project Description

Easter Island has almost been erased from history as it has no clear documentation of its past. Mysterious Moai statues are the only evidence of civilization. I gained a similar impression of Samjeon-dong, Seoul. Modern Moai at Samjeon-dong began with the consideration of a symbiotic structure for a city, including housing created by stacking commercial facilities and residential units on the everyday cultural ground.

The site is located at the corner of a village largely populated by four to five-story multiplex housing developments, all of similar size on uniformly planned sites. Even though the size and volume of the rectangular sites, each divided by a gridlike urban planning, is similar, each site has different conditions. Instead of concentrating on a more glossy form to maximize a building’s profile, as found in the many villages of multiplex housing, it is assumed that making facade flexible in responding to the condition of all four sides would create a flexible architecture and resolve the relationship with its surrounding features.

As architectural practice must overcome the mismatch and limitations caused by heterogeneity in retail facilities and multiplex housing. I hope it will begin to propose downtown residential areas of new promenades, enabling ‘cultural production and consumption‘ combined with the lightness of an everyday program. It can become a village that encourages families to stroll and allow for everyday, smaller-scale culture to flourish, rather than existing as commercial spaces purely for consumption in another generic commercial/residential building.