Museum of Emotions #8 competition 3rd Prize winners - Kim Sunbin and Jung Hwanseok

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to the 3rd Prize winner of our Museum of Emotions #8 competition – Kim Sunbin and Jung Hwanseok  from South Korea!

Kim Sunbin and Jung Hwanseok

Please tell us about your company (when it was founded, where it is based, how many employees, etc) Alternatively, if you do not have a company, please give us some insights on your own professional/academia background.

We are a young architecture and landscape duo based in Seoul, South Korea. Hwanseok Jung works at Chang-jo Architects, and Sunbin Kim works at ALIVEUS, a landscape design studio.

Brief information about the projects that you/your company have been involved with. For instance, what scale have you focused on/preferred, any significant projects where the company/ individuals have been Involved?

We've been entering competitions together since our student days, and now that we're both working, we mostly spend our weekends on them. We don't tie ourselves to any one type or scale of project. Instead, we take part in competitions across many different fields, and each new competition introduces us to a theme we haven't explored before.

What does architecture mean to you and what is the role of an architect in your society?

For us, architecture isn't limited to buildings. From a single room to a street, a park or a garden, every place where people live, walk, rest and gather is architecture. That's why we believe architects and landscape architects share the same role: shaping all of these spaces with care, so that people can live richer, fuller lives within them.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

We love taking on new challenges. Since architecture reaches into every part of how people live, we don't want to stay within one field. That's why we enter competitions on all kinds of themes and face questions we rarely come across in our everyday work. The Museum of Emotions was a completely new challenge for us. With no text allowed, only images, it gave us the opportunity to test whether space alone could convey an emotion.

What advice would you give to individuals who struggle to decide whether it would be beneficial for them to participate in architecture competitions?

Don't limit yourself to the fields you already know. A competition on an unfamiliar theme can teach you more than a familiar one, and it's even better when you team up with someone from a different field. And don't wait until you feel ready. Just start, and let the deadline do the rest.