HYONKWON_PORTFOLIO

“All the World’s a Stage“

STAGING SPACE, FRAMING LIFE

An architect composes walls, voids, and light.

A director shapes movement, space, and time. Both establish intention—yet meaning emerges through experience.

A performance unfolds, an audience interprets.

A building stands, a user inhabits. Neither stage nor architecture is still. Time transforms, reveals, redefines.

Theater frames stories, architecture frames life itself. Both are dialogues—fluid, responsive, complete through interaction.

seek to build spaces that speak, structures that listen, architecture as an evolving experience— where form and presence meet, and meaning is always becoming.

GSAPP CORE STUDIO 3 States of Housing

HUG FOR MANHATTAN BRIDGE GATE 2 1 LEARNING FROM THE STREET

GSAPP CORE STUDIO 1 Fugitive Mobilities

SHIFTING TO SHAFT 3

ARCHITECTURE COMPETITION Workplace Reimagined

DISMEMBERED ARCHITECTURE, REMEMBERED 4

GSAPP CORE STUDIO 2 Damage Control

Learning From The Street

WHAT MAKES HARLEM LIVELY?

West Harlem’s cultural vibrancy intrigued me during site visits, leading me to ask: What makes this neighborhood so dynamic? I found the answer in the interplay between people, street elements, and open spaces that invited occupation. More than a passage, the street fostered interactions, connecting homes, people, and daily life. Cataloging its layers revealed a richness beyond my initial perception, making me wonder: Could the street, more than the house, be the space closest to life itself?

APARTMENT AS A CULTURAL HUB, CONNECTING NEIGHBORHOOD

Despite the neighborhood’s vibrancy, this site felt isolated due to elevation differences. To bridge this gap, I integrated a central ramp, seamlessly connecting the site to its surroundings. At its heart, a plaza transforms the passage into a cultural hub, drawing in the community’s energy. Extending further, the ramp and plaza link with ground-floor open spaces and surrounding streets, echoing NYC’s grid.

W128thSt W129thSt

STREET TO THE BUILDING, BUILDING TO THE STREET

This is the whole building, designed by this design logic. Just as designed the corridor to foster interaction and embrace diverse ways of living, carved into the mass, creating generous circulation paths and spacious plazas throughout. Sunlight was carefully considered in this process. The awnings, balconies, glass frames, corridors, units, and rear passages layer across the façade and interior, generating a variety of microclimates. Each layer is designed to accommodate diverse ways of living, reinforcing the idea that architecture should support and reflect the richness of life itself.

Convent Avenue

VERSATILE ADD ON FURNITURES

Here are the add-on furniture elements previously mentioned. With an easily assembled and disassembled structure, people can create furniture of various sizes to suit their needs. From small pieces like chairs, to walls and awnings, and even larger structures like markets and stages, this system allows for flexible, user-driven adaptation of space.

With the add-on structure, the rooftop transforms into a garden, theater, or open-air cinema. Balconies are interconnected both horizontally and vertically, forming a continuous network of shared spaces. Varied massing ensures these outdoor areas flow together rather than remain separate. The adaptable furniture system seamlessly supports diverse lifestyles. By connecting rooftops, balconies, corridors, and units, the design fosters rich ways of living—where residents can watch movies, dance, and gather with loved ones, creating their own narratives within the space.

Variations in Dimension and Subdivision of Different Unit Types

Harlem is one of the most prominent sites of gentrification, following Brooklyn’s DUMBO. Designing a residential building here, I couldn’t ignore this reality. It is impossible to directly prevent rising housing prices. As an architect, considered what could do within my role to address this issue.

To address it, structured the building with a flexible wooden grid, allowing unit shapes and sizes to be easily adjusted. Residents can determine their unit size based on their financial situation. The reduced space doesn’t become

or

instead, it feeds into the

and accommodating

REIMAGINING THE CORRIDOR

I focused on reimagining the corridor, seeing it as more than just a cold, linear passage. Like streets in a city, corridors connect living spaces and should foster interaction. Growing up in Korea, where apartments dominate, had never seen corridors as vibrant spaces. To change this, widened them, introduced natural light, and combined two floors into a shared corridor. Inspired by the streets, integrated add-on furniture and attachments, creating opportunities for diverse ways of living and encouraging a sense of community.

Hug for Manhattan Bridge Gate

The Manhattan Bridge was built as an industrial link, connecting the rapidly growing Manhattan with the Brooklyn that served it, in early 20th century. The point where this megastructure touches Manhattan is right next to the heart of Chinatown, at a critical node where many neighborhoods meet.

Despite being a natural meeting point, the bridge’s massive scale has discouraged pedestrian activity. Now, in 2024, this area remains an empty, car-dominated plaza, where only the imposing Manhattan Bridge Gate stands tall, disconnected from the life of the city.

CHINATOWN EXPERIENCE

In contrast, Chinatown was the complete opposite—a neighborhood full of energy and life. Simply crossing the street transported me into a world of diverse people, intricate decorations, and distinct architecture, all of which captivated me. could sense the deep attachment to life and identity in a community that had long struggled to preserve its culture in the American landscape. As I walked through the neighborhood, mapped the symbols and ornaments that define its character and atmosphere, later organizing them into a drawing that captured the essence of the place.

GIVE HUG TO MANHATTAN BRIDGE GATE

After my research, the Manhattan Bridge no longer felt imposing but lonely, its arms outstretched as if waiting for an embrace. A hug shapes space, senses distance, and brings warmth—an intimate interaction of movement and emotion. To embody this, used scaffolding as a framework for symbols, ornaments and people, revealing the bridge’s identity and transforming it into a space of connection.

SYMBOLS and ORNAMENTS

SCAFFOLDING

I wanted to embrace the Manhattan Bridge, transforming it from a barrier into a space of connection. Shaped by its surroundings, my design introduces an intuitive stairway leading to a viewpoint, shifting the experience from looking up to engaging with the city. More than scaffolding, it is a flexible framework—an open system inviting people to shape it as their own. Inspired by Chinatown’s rich symbols and ornaments, I integrated their potential into New York’s scaffolding structures, creating a space where cultural expressions and everyday life intertwine. In this vision, the bridge is no longer distant and imposing but embraced by the community, not just through steel and stone, but through human connection.

Shifting To Shaft

Server rooms constantly generate high levels of heat, reaching around 70°C (158°F). To maintain their operation, various heat exchange systems are required.

Instead of letting this heat go to waste, we chose to recycle it—using it to warm both water and air. As a result, the building is wrapped and intersected by an extensive network of pipes, which may at first appear excessive. These pipes serve as medium for heat transfer, visibly weaving in and out of the structure, ultimately shaping the building’s unique identity.

The office landscape has shifted post-COVID, driven not just by the pandemic but by technological and industrial changes. With individualized work models reducing office demand and AI industries requiring more server space, I reimagined the future office. At its core is the Data Shaft—a vertical structure that supports both load-bearing and waste heat recovery, efficiently redistributing heat from high-temperature servers to enhance energy efficiency while integrating seamlessly into the building’s overall system.

REDEFINING THE OFFICE

Since traditional office buildings are located in the most accessible areas, integrated office with programs that can be used by broader public. The left section consists of tech spaces and flexible workspaces, forming the core office area. On the opposite side, public spaces actively utilizing heat include a greenhouse, educational facilities, an auditorium, a

and fitness areas. Between these distinct zones, urban gardens weave through the masses, acting as connectors that bring together office functions and communal activities, fostering interaction and engagement.

ARCHITECTURE AS A VICTIM

In the 1933 film King Kong, a giant beast torments the iconic Empire State Building. This moment marked the beginning of cinema’s long history of exploiting architecture, making it to nothing but a tool for cinematic spectacle. By reassembling film through the techniques that used to manipulate architecture, this project seeks to console what has been broken.

Small, compressed screens flutter in the sunlight, reflecting its movement as they shift and distort.

A massive, distorted spherical screen, warping the projected images, reshaping light and perception.

The intersecting and repeating seating arrangements disrupt and break continuity of experience. overlapping, fragmented screens and the continuous, unbroken ramp make contrast and irony.

At first glance, all of them appears to be decent screens, yet they serve only to adorn the buildings inside and out, adding layers rather than dictating the image.

MadisonAvenue

Every platform surrounding the pavilion is sliced, fragmented, and distorted by a series of diverse geometries, breaking conventional spatial continuity.

EMPIRE STATE BUILDING

HOW TO COMMEMORATE?

placed a grand seating area oriented toward the Empire State Building, the very first victim of cinema’s architectural violence. This structure responds to its urban context while the geometries establishing a direct visual axis with the building. Just as film has dismembered architecture and reduced it to a backdrop, these abstract geometric pavilions dismember the movie watching platform, transforming it into an altar for architecture.

Four pavilions continuously display distorted, unfocused projections, offering no clear image but instead draping the buildings behind them in a shifting veil of light—an act of quiet consolation.

Thank You!