This project is an architecture commissioned by Korea’s movie star, C. Her original home built in the ’70s was perhaps the only reality and important regression space for her, who has been the protagonist of silver screen from her young days, expressing the lives of countless others.
However, the commercial culture of Hongdae’s locality changed the surrounding landscape, and the old house, which had endured for more than 40 years, could not resist the new change. Her request to build a new building was rather simple. She asked for upper part of the building to have a residential function and the lower part to be lettable suited to the surrounding urban landscape, however believing that the memories of Korea’s top star recorded in the land, I persuaded her to propose a different type of architecture.
First, the wall was expanded due to the different levels in the surrounding topography, and it was made into a 70cm thick concrete wall to create numerous large and small openings and niches inwards and outwards the wall to enable exhibitions. Although it is an exhibition wall, this wall with a profound sense of volume and a dramatic expression in itself fulfills the leading purpose of this architecture as a memorial for actress C.
The original entrance, which started at the place where the four neighboring streets gather remains as an entrance space, and the stairway starting here connects each floor while relying on this thick wall. After passing through the restaurant and office floors, you arrive at an exhibition space that will record this top star, and there is a special space inside.
The small room you see when you reach the end of the exhibition suddenly opens up to a square horn, and the light pouring through the round windows representing the constellation of Aquarius changes the shape of the light bundle according to the position of the sun and wanders around the interior space. Moved by the amazing transformation of this small space, she cautiously said that this space would become her graveyard, and I immediately designed a white urn and hung it on the wall. This space became her mausoleum and sanctuary. While living in the house above it, wouldn’t she have a more fundamental reflection on her own life, towards a more valuable one?
In fact, our ancestors always lived with reflection like this. In Korean traditional houses, there were spaces such as a private shrine, a literary room, and a pavilion where the occupants were always thinking and reflecting. If there is no room for such in a house, even if it is a house that cannot afford it, we lived by putting special decorations on the walls saying that the Sungju Ghost is enshrined, and polishing our hearts and souls.
These spiritual landscapes were all driven out and expelled in the development period, hence architecture and houses were regarded as real estate values. One has said that a society and a city without a holy place cannot survive. Even if we do not visit religious facilities or cemeteries in distance, our lives will become special if the spaces we live in are special. This I call it the spiritual landscape – ‘Soulscape’, and this project with that special device and space is named the Aquarius Pyramid.
