Stefano Boeri’s ‘Hanji House’ reinterprets Chun Kwang Young’s eco-friendly paper art into architecture

Stefano Boeri Architetti, the ‘Hanji House’ is a site-specific pavilion built using wood for the ongoing Chun Kwang Young: Times Reimagined. Chun invited Boeri as a collaborative partner, who responded by conceptualising and reinterpreting Chun’s eco-friendly paper art into pavilion design.

The pavilion features 40 large-scale mulberry-paper reliefs, sculptures and installations created by the Korean artist Chun Kwang Young, at the Palazzo Contarini Polignac, in Venice.

“Hanji” is the name given to a traditional Korean paper made technique deriving from mulberry, also known as the "thousand years paper" due to its great resistance. It is also Chun’s prime tool of creation, which he uses to shape metamorphotic creatures reminiscent of living beings or spectacular scenes with historical and cultural symbolism. 

Installed in the Palazzo’s gardens, overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice, the Hanji House is a wooden pavilion, a practical model of ‘paper-tree architecture’ and it looks as a lantern from a distance. The design is inspired by the playful and yet meditative practice of folding paper in an infinite number of ways: the shape recalls ancient East Asian practices of paper-folding and tangram, besides the traditional Korean and East Asian houses, based on simple geometric modularity. It is made by a simple combination of volumes: four pyramids on the top of a parallelepiped, defining a planar surface shaped as a regular rhombus in the middle.

 From the outside, the envelope gives the Hanji House the appearance of a precious and at the same time playful object, a lighthouse to illuminate both the splendid Renaissance architecture in which it is located and the works of art that surround it.

Inside the Hanji House, a real-time interactive art installation is being developed by media artist Calvin J. Lee. Lee transformed triangular hanji packages created by artist Chun Kwang Young into virtual form. The tranquil environment inside Hanji House offers an immersive space for visitors to unwind and explore their inner selves as if walking through the interior of Chun’s works.

Chun Kwan Young has been working for 30 years under the theme of the interconnectedness between living beings and the socio-ecological values of their relationships. In ecology, interconnectedness is an absolute factor for the reproduction and survival of all living things, as well as an essential for ensuring biodiversity and enhancing sustainability in any adverse conditions.

The Hanji House will be open to the public from April 23 to 27 November 2022.

 

 

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