Doors: Boundaries of Communication

Arumjigi Culture Keepers arranges a special exhibition every year to uphold and take inspiration from traditional clothing, cuisine, and housing in creative ways for their continued development and use in modern society. This year's exhibition is Doors, Boundaries of Communication, which as its name implies is about the ‘door,’ one of the most basic elements of architecture. This is Arumjigi’s fourth exhibition on housing.
The first exhibition on housing was in 2005. It showed the beauty of tradition in furniture and household items. In 2008, Arumjigi suggesteda modern lifestyle in a traditional Korean house through the second such exhibition, and in 2011, it showed modern furniture design reflecting the aesthetics and proportions of traditional furniture. This exhibition goes much farther: Arumjigi has attempted to shed light on an essential element of architecture.
This exhibition exploresthe essential concept of a door, as well as tactile and visual aspects inherent to a door. Focusing on the relations between a door and its users, a door and architectural space, and a door and its surrounding environment, Arumjigi intends to discover diverse possibilities of a door that is practical and yet beautiful and that can reflect the culture of everyday living, while trying to find the best place for a door in actual living space, rather than an object to be shown in an exhibition space. Arumjigi arranged this exhibition in hopes that the door, already long a standardized form, will embodythe characteristics of space and people's sensitivities.
The first section, Doors by Architects, explores how a door can make architecture richer. Viewers can see how doors made of new proportions, materials, and techniques interact with space. The second section, Boundaries Forgotten, reproduces traditional doors seen in Donggwoldo (“Painting of Eastern Palace”), which is an illustration of Changdeokgung and Changgyeonggung done in the latter Joseon period. The third section, The Third Doors, introduces practical items produced in collaboration with crafts and design which show diverse possibilities to complement ordinary doors and surrounding spaces.
While preparing for this exhibition, Arumjigi looked at a door in the belief that we needed to completely reconsider even the most mundane things in our everyday living space and that we should cultivate our sense of beauty in our everyday living with excellent understanding of the tangible and intangible beauty of Korean culture.Arumjigi hopes that this exhibition lends great encouragement to the experts who are creating today’s housing space, and that the many doors we see everyday become passages to a richer culture that communicates with fresh, new sensitivity.