Pu Hsien Chan

Three Polemics on the Frame - An architecture in praise of openness, ambiguity, and contingencies

Architecture, at its core, entails the framing of life. In our time of increased societal polarisation and a persisting culture of antagonisation, architecture’s role should be to rethink its own practice of binary thinking, to allow instabilities and ambiguities to emerge, to productively open up for contingencies, and to blur its closed perimeters, fixed boundaries and limiting frames.

This project contests the blind following of pre-established socio-political and/or architectural dogmas and seeks to unframe architecture by deploying the very act of framing itself. It addresses these concerns by proposing a radical alternative to the reintegration of Seoul’s de-occupied Japanese/American militarised territory, the Yongsan Garrison. As part of a Place of Projects, an urban strategy in which plots are incrementally released, three initial projects (the Curtain, the Ground, and the Objects) are proposed to not only re-frame the existing histories, complexities and potentials of the site, but to also critically reflect on the architectural discipline.

More information

• Master thesis 'Three Polemics on the Frame'