Pai Hyungmin (Artistic Director of 5th Gwangju Folly)
What is the role of architecture in the age of climate change? How can architecture respond to the climate crisis? Organized by the Gwangju Biennale Foundation and the Gwangju Metropolitan City, the 5th edition of the Gwangju Folly has sought the way through circularity. Under the banner of Re:Folly, four new Gwangju Follies have been realized in an experimental cycle of material development, design, construction, and public activities. The economic and social system of the past two centuries has ravaged Earth’s ecosystems. While our mountains and rivers are being destroyed, local by-products are discarded as waste and the same products are supplied by traveling thousands of kilometers. This destructive route of production, consumption, and disposal has become entrenched in a vast industrial system. Re:Folly calls for a fundamental transformation of our industries toward a circular system. Each Re:Folly project takes on a strain of material design in relation to local resources: wood, earth, shell lime, seaweed, cereal, lacquer, etc. In realizing livable buildings through circularity, Re:Folly engaged in research, experimentation, and exploratory design: in other words an arduous process of trial and error.
Architecture of Process and Collaboration
Re:Folly demonstrates that circular architecture is practical and beautiful. Re:Folly is unique in that it has not only explored and developed sustainable local resources but has also built livable urban spaces through this creative process. Four teams that share an experimental approach to materials and a commitment to architecture’s public responsibility have participated. Assemble, BC Architects & Studies & Materials, and Atelier LUMA, continuing their collaboration at LOT 8 of the LUMA campus, have renovated an abandoned hanok. Ito Toyo, utilizing lacquer as a structural material, has realized the Urushi Shell. BARE worked with seaweed bioplastics to create a mobile architectural structure. Cho Nam Ho has developed a wood-based spatial and tectonic system for a Breathing Folly.
Through its arduous journey of circularity, Re:Folly lays out its specific challenges. Why are we unable to use local hinoki trees as structural members? Why are seaweed stalks thrown away into the sea during harvest? Why do bricks made from oyster shells cost 100 times more than cement bricks? Can slag be considered a regional circular material? Can urushi become an expansive bio-plastic? Documenting its controversies and debates. Re:Folly generates a series of material narratives. As built work in the everyday environment, they provide essential and rare test beds to monitor its material designs, hence opening a wide range of possibilities for continuing innovation.
Collaboration is at the heart of the process. The transition to circularity requires participation among experts, companies, public entities, and the citizenry. The Urushi Shell involved intense collaboration between Ito’s office, lacquer experts led by Toki Kenji, structural consultant Kanada Mitsuhiro, as well as a team of curators, craftsmen, and consultants in Korea. Assemble, BC, and LUMA, themselves multidisciplinary organizations, worked with Yoon Jungwon, Kim Hyeong Ki, and a team of manufacturers, builders, and craftspeople in research, development, and construction. Breathing Folly involved wood experts Supia Construction, environmental consultant Lee Byeongho, and BIPV specialist Gohosolar. BARE worked with researchers and manufacturers in algae bioplastics. Re:Folly goes beyond individual auteurism, placing process and collaboration at the forefront of its spirit and methodology. If the modern pavilion most often sought refuge in the idea of architecture’s autonomy, Re:Folly seeks to confirm that architecture, like all forms of life, lives not in seclusion. The energy of building, in all of its changing material and social processes, persists in the world. “No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.” The words of John Donne, selected for the opening of For Whom the Bell Tolls, tell us that the emergence and receding of life rings for all of us. Just as all living things are interconnected, no building is an island.
