한국국제교류재단

Chun has long maintained that architecture must reach beyond private ownership, for once a building enters the fabric of the city it becomes a social asset intimately tied to people’s lives. This belief underpins her ongoing pursuit of publicness — the idea that architecture should restore, sustain, and enrich the communities it serves. Architects, she says, must seek harmony with the surrounding environment and identify ways for buildings to positively influence the community. Thus, they should look beyond the exceptional five percent of buildings typically associated with private-sector projects and imbue public value in the remaining 95 percent — the structures that shape daily life.

This idea crystallized during Chun’s work on the Asan Nanum Foundation building in Seoul, completed in 2017. Designed to be easily accessible to the public, the non-profit headquarters demonstrated how even privately owned architecture could be opened up to the city. It prompted her to further consider architecture’s civic responsibilities: how a building expresses its stance toward society, and what values it conveys through its form and presence.

Her next major project in this pursuit was the Roh Moo-hyun Center for Citizens (2022), located near Changdeok Palace in central Seoul, a nationally designated Historic Site and UNESCO World Heritage site. Constrained by building regulations aiming to preserve the palace surroundings and the traditional houses in Bukchon Hanok Village, the project involved complex negotiations with the Korea Heritage Service, the local residents, and public stakeholders. Despite these challenges, Chun guided the project to completion, reaffirming her belief that architects should help navigate social issues and community needs.

The Roh Moo-hyun Center for Citizens was designed both to commemorate the late President Roh Moohyun and to serve as a public space. Located beside Changdeok Palace on what was once a low hillside, the building features curves that flow seamlessly from floor to walls to roof, echoing the site’s original topography.
© Roh Kyung

Chun stresses that architects hold a position of social responsibility, a role they must actively embrace. She likens architects to people who cultivate trees: Just as trees create forests, gardens, or walking paths, architects should create spaces where people want to linger.
© Lee Min-hee

In a time when many people carry deep emotional fatigue, Chun notes that rest and consolation are essential. Such comfort is not only found in private, introspective spaces but also in communal environments where strangers can interact, communicate, and experience a shared sense of stability. As a compelling example, she cites the Jeoldusan Martyrs’ Shrine in Seoul’s Mapo District — the site where thousands of Korean Catholic converts were executed during the 1860s. With its layered history and contemplative atmosphere, the shrine’s significance extends beyond its religious meaning, offering visitors space for reflection, grief, and quiet restoration.

The Woodland Crematorium in Sweden inspired Chun to think even more deeply on how architecture can dignify the experience of loss after she witnessed a private funeral service there. In contrast to today’s standardized funeral practices, she emphasizes the need for spaces that allow people to mourn peacefully and solemnly. Chun recognizes that designing such spaces with sensitivity is a vital responsibility for architects — their work must protect human dignity and help support emotional healing.

Her commitment to this architectural role is reflected in the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum (2012) in Seoul, dedicated to the memory of the hundreds and thousands of women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. The architectural design structures the experience, guiding visitors along a narrative arc from remembrance to recovery, while the brick facade serves as an epitaph to the survivors, most of whom have passed away.

Figure and Ground is a remodeling of an old building on Garosu-gil in Seoul’s Gangnam District. More than thirty years old, its formerly enclosed lower levels were opened up, while the upper floors were expanded and reorganized. The horizontal brick bands that define the façade function as balconies and exterior stairways, linking each floor and tracing a continuous “path” around the building.
© Roh Kyung

Of the issues architects face today, climate change and population decline are among the most important. Chun is particularly concerned with the latter and the structural problems this demographic shift creates in Korean cities. With Seoul’s population projected to fall to about eight million by 2050, she stresses the need to reconsider existing infrastructure and reorganize urban space to reflect these changing realities.

Tucked deep inside Seongsan-dong, a residential neighborhood in Seoul’s Mapo District, the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum raises awareness of the atrocities experienced by women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military. Eschewing a large signboard or grand lobby, the museum has only a small entrance door, leading visitors along a guided route on which a docent accompanies them and shares the women’s stories.
© Kim Duho

Chun also highlights the demands of Korea’s super-aged society. Rather than relying on simple technological solutions, she examines how structural shifts in society impact architecture at a fundamental level — from the decline of older city centers to the challenges posed by new towns. She proposes new housing models that energize local communities and encourage intergenerational coexistence. These, she argues, are core tasks that architects must address in the coming decades.

For Chun, architecture is never about the capabilities of a single person. She emphasizes communication and collaboration among many different stakeholders during the process of bringing architecture to life — from dialogue with clients, contractors, and technical experts to the persistent coordination required to move a project from blueprints to construction.

Located in Paju Book City, the MU:M Office Building echoes the owl logo of MU:M Education, an English education company, with a massing that resembles a tree stump. Entirely clad in dark gray bricks, the rectangular volume gains a sense of rhythm from its entrance — a twisted, incised opening cut into the facade.
© Roh Kyung

“Architecture is created out of relationships,” she says. “A building is not complete simply because I do my part. That’s only 20 percent of the entire process. It’s only completed when the other 80 percent — the processes, systems, and people involved — fall into place. We have to expand our understanding of relationships so it includes a broader complexity, from procedures and systems to yet unrealized technologies.”

The MU:M Office Building (2015) in Paju Book City north of Seoul is a case in point. Initial discrepancies between design intent and onsite conditions, and communication gaps among the bricklayers, created challenges that could only be resolved through continual dialogue and consultation. The experience reminded Chun that architecture is not an individual achievement but the result of cooperation, communication, perseverance, and collective pride.

Dialogue in the Dark, a global exhibition that began in Germany in 1988, immerses visitors in complete darkness to awaken senses other than sight and ask what true communication really means. The Dialogue in the Dark Bukchon venue expresses this concept architecturally with an exterior skin inspired by a traditional bamboo screen.
© Kim Yongkwan

She also believes that senior architects must openly share their failures and frustrations so that younger colleagues can learn from them and seek better solutions. This collective transparency forms the basis of an architectural ecosystem where knowledge and experience accumulate, enabling architecture to exert social influence rather than simply perform basic functions.

“Looking back, I think architecture is ultimately about building relationships between people,” Chun reflects. “It isn’t only about creating space; it’s about imagining how the people will encounter one another there, what they will experience, and how they will feel in that space.”

Chun approaches architecture not merely as the act of building something beautiful but as a sustained inquiry into what society needs, conveying a strong message about positive change.

Inside a stone warehouse in Namhae, the once simple space that stored grain required extensive reinforcement to suit its new purpose. Old wooden trusses were replaced with steel members to support the roof, and H-beams were installed and designed to function as structural columns.
© Roh Kyung