Apartments constitute the most typical residential form across South Korea's cities, accounting for more than half of all housing in the country. Most people rarely have a chance to think critically about what options other than apartments might be possible. The newly opened exhibition “Performative Home: Architecture for Alternative Living” at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, gets visitors to think outside the box about their living environments.
"I have wanted to touch on the issue, wondering how it is that we can't think of other alternatives. This question has lingered in my mind for a long time, as I also live in an apartment," Chung Dah-young, curator at the MMCA, told The Korea Herald on Friday. The exhibition unfolds around six themes: “The Home as an Architectural Manifesto,” “Reimagining Family Homes,” “The Home as a Social Ground,” “The Home as a Panorama,” “Small Homes, Renovated Homes” and “The Home as Temporary Dwelling.
” More than 58 houses by 30 architectural offices built after 2000 are on view. “It was not easy to deal with houses before 2000, since there are not many houses that remain intact in their original forms for more than 20 years,” Chung said. The house named Basecamp Mountain by architect Kim Kwang-soo located in Eunpyeong-gu, northwestern Seoul, is home to a married couple who asked the architect to design a house as a place to converse with friends with a sm.