Children's nursery rhyme to embody Korean Pavilion's past and future at architecture biennale

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Children's nursery rhyme to embody Korean Pavilion's past and future at architecture biennale

Published: 19 Mar. 2025, 15:02

SHIN MIN-HEE
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

A graphic of the Korean Pavilion for the upcoming Venice Biennale of Architecture [ARTS COUNCIL KOREA]

In the Korean nursery rhyme “Little Toad, Little Toad,” children sing about giving a toad an old house in exchange for a new house. Although the song’s origins are unknown, it’s frequently sung among children while building sandpiles.

This jaunty song may be unfamiliar to foreign audiences, but the Korean Pavilion for the upcoming 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture is set to build a narrative upon it.

“We used the lyrics and reinterpreted them through architecture,” co-artistic director Chung Dah-young said in a press conference on Monday. “The link between the concept of old and new houses in the toad song symbolizes the past and future of the Korean Pavilion.”

The Curative Architecture Collective (CAC), based in Seoul and specializing in architecture, helms the Korean Pavilion. The collective is comprised of three members: Chung, Kim Hee-jung and Jung Sung-kyu.

The architecture biennale and its fine art counterpart, the Venice Biennale, are both held on alternative years at the same location within the Giardini in Venice. However, as this biennale centers on architecture, the emphasis is relatively heavier on the Korean Pavilion building rather than the artworks.

The Korean Pavilion, since first opening in 1995, is a steel-framed glass building with a noticeably amorphous shape that encompasses both curvy and flat surfaces, deviating from the usual “white cube” structure. The see-through design of the building also elicits an atmosphere that makes it appear like it is floating above ground and has been described by artists and curators as a “living room-like space.”

This arrangement was firmly based on the guidelines that the building would not harm any trees in the area when it was built by architects Kim Seok-chul and Franco Mancuso.

Thirty years later, the pavilion’s organizer, the Arts Council Korea, is questioning what the future holds, in terms of sustainability, all while looking back at its history through the archives.

Four artists, who each founded or manages their own architecture studios, were commissioned to create installations in the pavilion: Lee Dammy of Flora and Fauna, Young Ye-na of Plastique Fantastique, Park Hee-chan of Studio Heech and Kim Hyun-jong of Atelier KHJ.

The installations are described to focus on the hidden stories behind the pavilion, such as in Lee’s “Overwriting, Overriding” and Young’s “30 Million Years Under the Pavilion.” The latter installation features 400 clay dolls, described as “guardians of the earth,” as the artist merged fiction with archaeology to imagine them as part of the pavilion’s history.

Park devised equipment that “reacts” to the pavilion’s surrounding trees, in the installation titled “Time for Trees,” and Kim’s “New Voyage,” reminiscent of a boat’s sail, was installed on the building’s rooftop, an unprecedented presentation among the other pavilions at the biennale.

The 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture begins May 10 and ends Nov. 23.

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [[email protected]]