UNITEDLAB Associates. Architecture of Dreams, 2016. Installation view at Palazzo Mora, 2016.

Architecture of Dreams
Does architecture have the aim of enabling human beings to realize a state of happiness?
Collective housing since the 1950's has developed technically as well as functionally. It has not, however, developed as much typologically due to constraints such as land shortage, property values, and urban density. In addition, while experiencing a period of rapid industrialization, developers and architects specializing in this work have produced collective housing by a ‘copy and paste’ method according to economic profits, but without ethics and thorough research. This is even more evident in so-called ‘developing countries’ where urbanization and the economic growth rate increased greatly. After the Korean War, in this context, high density apartment buildings are most prevalent and have the highest economic value in South Korea. French geographer Valérie Gelezeau’s book The Republic of Apartments points out this state of Korean housing, and I prompt the question: who is responsible for this shadow of the built environment?
When architecture meets the dimension of time, it becomes sublime.
When a person stands up, the boundary of one’s space is defined. Once the existence of our space is established, so is that of our relationship with others and the dimension of time. When architecture doesn’t possess sublime layers of time, it doesn’t have an objective for its inhabitants, and its concept of dwelling is deformed. As Heidegger stated, “Only if we are capable of dwelling, only then can we build.” If the architectural objective for collective housing is not dwelling but simply a mass of residential units for economic value, it is a meaningless form where man cannot interact with time, space, and existence. As this lack of humanism is reproduced, vital aspects of dwelling such as neighbors and community do not exist. There is an invisible power and selfishness, since the building of collective housing is based mainly on the goal of maximum financial gains rather than man’s desire for optimum dwelling in the past and present. This raises the question of what exactly is dwelling in the future. How can we envision its architecture? When technology, science and industry gradually change the environment, arts and culture inevitably change.
I envision an urban fantasy with no apparent limits or restrictions, just like in a dream.
An Gyeon, a Korean painter of the early Joseon period, created an image of Mongyudowondo based on a dream that Prince Anpyeong had in 1447. The painting depicts the narrative of the real world and a dream world together from lower left to upper right. In this narrative, Mureung Garden (a utopia described in a Chinese folk tale where people live in harmony with nature, unaware of the outside world for centuries) is a kind of virtual space where an idealized existence has been yearned for a long time.
To return to the initial question, is architecture a tool to realize your happiness in a distant future? Then, one may ask, what is the future of which you dream? How does one envision a house (space) in which your desired dwelling condition is satisfied, and which makes you happy (existence)?
It is difficult to tell whether the world (time & space) we live in is reality (existence) or a dream (image).