The original “arrow factory” are old warehouses adjacent to the Imperial Academy heritage. This project is a regeneration-by-intervention, starting from the existing spatial framework, yet aiming at transforming it from a vast empty warehouse to a space that filled with unleashed vitality, for crowds of people from creative industry to gather around and communicate. It will not only offer diverse programs such as meeting, screening, library, co-working, but also become a “collaborative commune” for those who are interested in the innovation of media and culture. 

Following the old wall of Imperial Academy mottled by hundreds of years of history, the first space you enter is a proper-scaled courtyard, recreational and meeting rooms wrapping around it. If you take the stairway to the deck, you can see the “Biyong”-  the golden-roofed palace hall where the emperor used to give lectures in the Imperial Academy - right in front of you eyes.

In order to fully exploit the height of the space, we added a mezzanine floor for extended program, and leave several voids connecting the double height space. The creative events that happen within the existing open but bland space might fall into homogeneous setting and lost its focus, that’s why numerous “wooden attics” are introduced as enabling devices. Activities could now follow different trajectories, unfolding around or within those attics.

Each Attic has a specific program: display, meeting, library, entertainment, bar…presenting itself in a unique and vivid form. Each of these exquisite objects also evolves as a switch that can turn on tangible narrative experience. Once you are inside those small enclosed spaces, you would find many openings, like viewfinders targeted at specific views, which would re-link different threads of spatial narrative, and therefore, enable the user to experience the un-expected scenarios while exchanging their thoughts.