Hongwon Suh - Work Sample 2022

Hongwon Suh SCI-Arc M.Arch II 2020-2022 Selected Works

Contact

+1 (213) 458-2767 hongwon97@gmail.com Los Angeles, CA

Hongwon Suh

Statement

Hongwon Suh is an aspiring architect currently advancing his graduate studies as an M.Arch 2 student at the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

Before joining SCI-Arc, he joined the team of Seoul based architecture firm, where he worked as a practicing architect along with the head architects of traditional Korean housing projects. A year later, he graduated from McGill University in Montreal where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Architecture. During his studies, he worked as a student photographer for the Architecture Student Association.

With a little over five years in academia and the professional field, he sees his time at SCI-Arc as a career-shifting opportunity to set a clear objective to develop into a multidisciplinary professional that believes in the power of architecture in the technological world.

He hopes to pursue work that advances both film and architecture by blurring the line between them.

Table of Contents

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“WE:LAB” SCI-Arc DS 1201 2GBX Design Studio II Instructor: Jackilin Bloom

“Codify” McGill University Undergraduate Thesis Instructor: François Sabourin

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“Diamond Ring” SCI-Arc DS 1200 2GAX Design Studio I Instructor: Marcelyn Gow Partner: Zarina Farmer-George

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“Alter Nature” SCI-Arc VS 4201 Visual Studies II Instructor: Andrea Cadioli

“WooZoo” SCI-Arc 2021 Summer IDD Instructor: William Virgil

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“Portraits” Personal Work

WE:LAB Institution: SCI-Arc Course: DS 1201 2GBX Computational Design Studio II Instructor: Jackilin Bloom Software: Rhino, Unreal Engine 5, Blender, ZBrush

“Nature is a totally efficient, selfregenerating system.”

-Buckminster Fuller

At a port of El Segundo in Los Angeles County, the city anticipates a next industry leading BIO-TECH building affiliated with interests from various stakeholders around the world to satisfy the humanity’s need. Responding to the imminent threat of overpopulation, WE:LAB researches and conducts a cross-fertilization experiments of different plant species to adapt to the changing environmental conditions of the future.

The building is a witness to the birth of a new kind, and a whole laboratory in itself. The building supports the constant collaboration loop between the human researchers and the A.I. then showcases these interactions to the visitors.

The image we perceive in reality is not the whole picture of the story. Images are merely stored historical information of forms and ideas. Mashing these images together establishes another set of category and a consequent logic. Wired by the images produced from the Google’s GAN training and the collage exercise of Hilla Becher’s industrial forms of architecture, the sophisticated volumes of the modern day BIO-Tech laboratory rises from the port of El Segundo. The images either suggest spatial development strategy or constructed shape of the agents that might exist inside the building.

The site in El Segundo neighborhood is rich with residues of industrial constructions - silo plants are situated adjacent to the beach shore, for instance. The image-driven volume study reuses these formal language spread across the site and turns them into a newly bred interface for science, technology and innovation. Ideas are recycled and beautified images emerges out of the existing landscape, transitioning El Segundo into the next leading BIO-Tech innovative hub.

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“WE:LAB”

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Agent - objects who enact the thought process of A.I.

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GAN-Trained Images from Ruin x Sneakers

“WE:LAB”

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Environment - surfaces on which experiments are conducted

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GAN-Trained Images from Parliament x Factory

“WE:LAB”

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Earlier studies of volumes show how they collide with each other to create different pockets of interior spaces. Inspired from the image training and collage exercise, the translucent globulous shell, erupted rocky terrain and the protruded walkway that contours the entire volume create the most capturing moments inside the model. The different lights also affect the mood of the environment. Sunlight seeping through the gaps and the emissive lights from the walls add to the scene.

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The vegetation is distributed in an interesting way. They grow and propagate, regardless of the ground’s flatness. For them, everywhere is inhabitable and thus, can truly conquer the whole space. Through natural selection, plants will determine where to inhabit and overtake. Depending on the amount of sunlight being exposed to the surface, different species will occupy that space.

With little control of mechanical support installed throughout the lab (like the pipes visible in the image below), the building almost acts like a living being - a fully functioning communicative medium that stands between the A.I. and the human stakeholders. The A.I. will perform its thought experiment live, while humans will take the results and bring another experiments, and vise-versa. The scientists, visitors and A.I. can join together to discuss the subject matter in one place. The fascinating visual poetry will be shown here and there...

“WE:LAB”

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The assembly space of the BIO-Tech building can be the house for the commons. A space where visitors, scientists and A.I. - both local and international - can come together to discuss the future technology. The central rock formation becomes the testing ground for the new species by allowing the A.I. to control the temperature, humidity and sunlight in the space. The unmanned agents will show the updated information using holographic display. The tested specimens are taxidermied inside an assigned waterproof bags and are displayed on the wall of assembly. The specimens provide the fundamental backdrop for scientific discussion and unification of knowledge with the world.

“WE:LAB”

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The notion of transparency is key concept to WE:LAB and those who visit the space. The highly complicated feedback loop between the wet labs and the dry labs, the hands-on experiments and the data simulations, is transparently shown to the public. The fuzzy, yet intriguing thresholds invite people to be drawn towards the mysterious labs and supervise the whole research process. These bags create a certain sense of unfamiliarity, but establishes intimate relationship with the viewer.

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Every entrance of the assembly block and the main laboratory block is filtered by an airlock entryway. Because the experiments require certain level of temperature and humidity to be maintained, the thresholds are guarded by double opening system. Once the visitors pass through the first opening after scanning their face and a piece of identification, they are sprayed with reduced alcohol sanitization liquid vapor. Then they can pass through the second opening and enter the space. This isolated silhouette experience provides interesting new way to enter a space.

Transparency is ubiquitous inside WE:LAB. Not only the airlock entry, the flying agents reveal their inner mechanism and the collected saps from the newly bred species are all shown to the public. Instead of insisting on confidentiality of the experiments, the transparency celebrates the innovation and shares with the rest of the world.

“WE:LAB”

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It is, essentially a laboratory in itself, an the entire world is the experimental gro for the A.I. It imagines itself and expres its earthliness through the outside text of growth and the interior exhibition of materiality, subject matter, and worldly knowledge. As the A.I. and the laborato mass grow and develop its database, its surrounding context and the correspon neighborhoods grow with him/her/them us, eventually aspired to be fully mature into a visual museum, data center and supercomputer of the world.

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nd ound sses ure

y ory s nding m/ ed

“WE:LAB”

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Main Lab Block - collectors using the track system

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Main Lab Block - new tree species grow inside the assigned cell

“WE:LAB”

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L Assembly Block - researchers, visitors, A.I. come together to discuss R Assembly Block - the drones update the A.I.’s thought process

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Main Lab Block

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“WE:LAB”

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The image-volume formal expression is simplified into six distinctive blocks that are placed onto the site in a striated arrangement: the main entrance block, main lab block, secondary lab block, assembly block, exhibition block and the exhibition entrance block. The archaeological quality of the facade texture is translated onto the formal strategy, as the blocks represent larger significance as visitors proceeds from one block to the next. These blocks also play in different levels, as shown on the section drawing, and interchange themselves with the void as well. The six blocks that contain the interior activity comprising the whole building should be, in fact, 13 blocks, considering the two entrances at the side and the canyon-like narrow slits of hidden space created in between the blocks.

“WE:LAB”

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L Exterior - top view looking at assembly / exhibition block R Exterior - narrow canyon space between the assembly / exhibition block

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Exterior - between the main lab block / secondary lab block

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Exterior - between the west entrance / main lab block

“WE:LAB”

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Exterior - between the secondary lab block / assembly block

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“WE:LAB”

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Codify Institution: McGill University Course: Undergraduate Thesis Instructor: François Sabourin Software: Rhino, Photoshop, Illustrator, Processing, Unity

“Everyone should learn how to code because it teaches you how to live better!”

In a near future where high-velocity transportation technology is accessible to everyday consumer level, those who enjoy a remote, off-grid lifestyle form sets of micro community and establish their living off of renovated abandoned warehouses, away from busy city center. Here, electricity as a medium becomes a primary focus among the environmental elements in human society. The project attempts to express architecture with methods such as scoring and graphing and lay out a numerical relationship between the medium, human and architecture. This project presents a highly active building community in which its occupants engage themselves through virtual games.

In “Unscripted Performances” by David Leatherbarrow, he argues that an ordinary architecture is no longer the answer to an ever-changing condition of contemporary society. Just like all nodes of Alan Kay’s programming language are interconnected, architecture could be the bridging node that connects human being and its surrounding.

To ‘score’ something means to orchestrate or arrange, typically for a specified instrument or instruments. If architecture were instruments, and its medium were through the common energy source of electricity, the energy value of home can be expressed in terms of the energy value of its occupants. The relationship between the two different but interconnected energy guages can be visually graphed on Cartesian plane.

In order to create scores out of these highly descriptive scenarios, every elements need to be turned into parameters that can eventually be computed mathematically. Each activity of the occupants are categorized by the amount of electricity consumed and each electricity consumptions are calculated by the usage of light fixtures and heating apparatus around the house. Human’s daily schedule can be summarized by a chain of tasks they execute and thus, how much electricity they consume for each tasks.

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“Codify”

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Bespoke Furniture Station Set 1

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Bespoke Furniture Station Set 2

“Codify”

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Sources of electricity consumption in th house are broken down into three main categories - lighting, heating and electr appliances. The distribution of each of these components is then translated in coded floor plans, dictating which wall defines which rooms. The walls come in different types - short + opaque wall, sh + transparent wall, tall + opaque wall, ta transparent wall, curtain-drawing wall. of these walls are 0’s and 1’s of opacity transparency parameter. Curtain-drawi wall is a manual override of the transpa parameter. This floor plan is open to ma different possibilities.

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ronic

to type n five hort all + Each and ing arency any

“Codify”

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Machinery Constructing Different Component of the House

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Daily Scenario inside the Units

“Codify”

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2D Floor Plan of Wall Configuration at 10 a.m.

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3D Axonometric Floor Plan of Wall Configuration at 10 a.m.

“Codify”

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As the occupants’ schedules are reduced to list of tasks which is a combination of electricity usage from light fixtures and heating apparata, the furniture of future home will be in a form of mobile units consisting of the furniture with lighting and heating integrated into them. Since the nature of the community expects a high exchange rate of their furniture pieces (and even walls), they are built with light materials or include movable compartments such as locking wheels on the bottom of the base. Then, their furniture stations are designed and then placed onto the 3D printed thermal mass boundary. They are placed so that whichever shares a common task are adjacent to the other one. The combined light and heat map from the lighting fixtures and heating apparata is then abstracted to a form of resource distribution and thus gives the occupants hints to decide which area of the house gets to have an opportunity to share these resources by controlling the closure of the walls.

“Codify”

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HOME Simulation Game Interface 1

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HOME Simulation Game Interface 2

“Codify”

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Diamond Ring Course: DS 1200 2GAX Computational Design Studio I Instructor: Marcelyn Gow Partner: Zarina Farmer-George Software: Rhino, ZBrush, Cinema4D, Redshift, Octane

“There is no magic in magic, it’s all in the detail.”

- Walt Disney

On a steep grassy hill in the city of Pomona, California, sits Diamond Ranch elementary school. The Power of Ten philosophy focuses on the specific manoeuvre of camera zooming out from a furniture to a classroom, and then to the whole school. The material, atmosphere and even the detail in the furniture are translated from one level to another and introduces a surprising transition in overall mood of the space.

The three pedagogical categories of program are laid out in distinct clusters.

The school is designed by students themselves, with each level of education taking on different partt of which they study and learn.

The three pedagogical categories of program are laid out in distinct clusters - the primary education - the intermediate education and the upper education level.

The school is designed by students themselves, with each level of education taking on different part, each carefully designing the furniture, classroom and the entire building in which they study and learn.

Beginning with a modification exercise of the famous Thonet chairs, carefully reinterpreting their elegent curvilinear forms, which once functioned as different components of the chair, has transformed into a set of uniform formal language of the new Diamond Ranch elementary school campus. They now act as different components of the campus and show up in different scales - the silhouette, walkway tubes, classroom frames, and some still remain as furniture pieces. In tandem with the theme of “Power of Ten”, the design of the school is entirely based on its details. The curvature detail dominating the whole site grows and creates different combination to eventually introduce a new spatial qualities of an unconventional learning environment.

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“Diamond Ring”

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The little details of the school becoming the structural elements encourages students to design their own space. The primary educat design and build their own chairs, the interm education to design their own classrooms, t upper education design the whole campus buildings. The recurring Thonet curves mot students to get inspiration for their designs the hands-on crafting courses help them vis the space. By designing their own learning s they are in charge of a bigger task: protectin environment, starting with their own classro Fig. 01

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Scene from the Documentary Samsara (2011) showing the Tibet monk carefully mastering the detail of the drawing.

Hongwon Suh

e major o tion mediate the 01

tif help and sualize space, ng the ooms.

“Diamond Ring”

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The first classroom designed by the students themselves is the poetry circle room located in the East end of the campus. It has an excellent audio quality which means this space could also work as presentation space. The space is filled with the eccentric chairs that the students have designed and built with the help of their instructors and because of the lightness of the structure used, the warm sunlight can easily brighten up the whole area.

The transparent and fluid purple cushion used in one of the chairs is enlarged to a bigger scale and is hung by the wall to provide seating in a fun and playful way. Some of the Thonet curves used in the chairs are also brought to architectural scale to create structural frames or rigs to hang other necessary furniture pieces on the wall.

“Diamond Ring”

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Just outside the intermediate education cluster, the poetry circle room has a porous roof with modular waffle structural walls shaped like a flower pot.

Students come here to discuss about their literature and group projects.

Along with the chairs that they have designed, they also design their own classrooms in which they can use and discuss. After they graduate, the chairs and the classrooms are passed down to the next generation of incoming students so that they can modify the design. They can experiment with different materiality, shape, or they can disassemble the entire model and replace with other components from other chairs. They can exchange components among themselves, allowing them to upcycle all the parts.

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“Diamond Ring”

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Classroom Cluster - bird’s eye view

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Classroom Cluster - top floor

“Diamond Ring”

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Alter Nature Course: VS 4201 - Visual Studies II Instructor: Andrea Cadioli Software: Rhino, Unreal Engine

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes” - Carl Jung

Forest wilding, intertwining vines, crickets chirping... The forest calls us. As the debauchee enters the wild, feigned sight of landscape unfolds before their eyes. This unfamiliar dream-like reality casted upon them is beyond their understanding. Unable to grasp their head around the vision, they wonder.

The elders of the tribe used to tell them stories but none as surreal as this. In search of a source of human touch in the wilderness, they keep searching day and night.

For the light.

For the new beginning.

They called it, Alter Nature.

Starting from replicating the surreal nature composition image by Jon Emmony, the dreamscape is carefully constructed with hundreds of foliages, crystals, and other objects morphing the reality of a typically perceived “nature”.

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“Distant elders might have told our distant ancestors dreams about the flower petals, the wings of praying mantis, perflectly spherical crystals all shining together in a forest.”

“Alter Nature”

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The flower petals, the wings of praying mantis, reflective crystal surface of the spheres all merge into one scene, blurring the line that separates reality from dream. All the elements are taken from the original image made by Jon Emmony, and are rearranged to extend the limited composition into a imagined landscape. Knotting skeletons, animal skin riverbed, glitching light ropes, growing wings...

“Alter Nature”

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Knotting Skeleton

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Wings of Praying Mantis

“Alter Nature”

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L Animal Skin Riverbed R Knotting skeletons, animal skin riverbed, glitching light ropes, growing wings...

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WooZoo Course: VS 4200 Visual Studies Instructor: Rachael McCall Partner: Arjun Bharat Software: Cinema4D, After Effect CC

“We make air and space available for everyone.”

The main objective of this project is the deviation from the original concept and narrative and tell a different story of the mask created from the “Vice” project.

The supervillain mask encompassing its agony and pain turns into a beautiful flowy object which blends with the environment in which it lies. The camouflage is the main purpose of this space mask. The novice space travelers can equip this head gear to virtually experience the ISS work environment and thus provide them with new style of training ground. The name of the new prototype comes from the astronaut who wears the the new equipment and enters the new training program.

Early Stage Modelling in ZBrush

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3D Printed Model of the Mask

“WooZoo”

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Crystal Shell

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Texture Detail

“WooZoo”

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The trainee can determine the shape of the mask and choose which material to be assigned to which component to their preference in their virtual training software. The delusional bubble in which their brain is fed into is the sensual environment model to allow them to be psychologically trained in a zero-gravity situation and up to 9G moment space vessel. The new aspiring astronauts can take this software home and train on a daily basis and get used to the environment faster than anyone else.

“WooZoo”

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Portrait Personal Work

“Some nice face to face chit-chat with you...”

One advantage of travelling around the world is all the friends and their families I got to meet. They are important part of my life, as important as my architectural / academic work. They are the reason why I am here and they carry the same amount of life story that I have.

By shooting a portrait of them, I can document all the love, hatred, arguments, joy and all the process I went through while I was with them. These people are big part of my life and I present to you, their stories.

Most of the time, I coordinated the clothings they would wear in the photoshoot and direct them how to pose in front of the camera and have a nice conversations with them while taking photos.

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Fujifilm X-T3 16mm 1/160s f/1.6 ISO 160

Nikon D3200 55mm 1/60s f/4 ISO 1600

Hot Springs

McGill University

Cover Photo:

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Fujifilm X-T3 16mm 1/320s f/3.6 ISO 160

SCI -Arc

Fujifilm X-T3 23mm 1/1000s f/3.2 ISO 1250

Chinatown

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Hongwon Suh

Fujifilm X-T3 23mm 1/8000s f/2.2 ISO 320

Graffiti Alley 86

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Fujifilm X-T3 16mm 1/160s f/1.6 ISO 160

Hot Springs 88

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Fujifilm X-T3 16mm 1/320s f/3.6 ISO 160

SCI -Arc 90

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Cover Photo:

Fujifilm X-T3 23mm 1/1000s f/3.2 ISO 1250

Chinatown 92

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Cover Photo:

Fujifilm X-T3 16mm 1/320s f/3.6 ISO 160

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Hongwon Suh

+1 (213) 458-2767 hongwon97@gmail.com Los Angeles, CA