17. Bundle Meeting
There was not even a full month left until the deadline day.
It was thanks to Team Leader Seungjin, who had belatedly snapped up a project the company had already given up on.
Well. You could say they had no choice in a crisis, but if it would take ten days just to do the design report and panel work that had to be submitted, that meant there were not even twenty days left to set the concept, design, and draw the plans.
If things went wrong, a chilling moment could come where even Director Yoo-uk would have to draw plans.
No, strictly speaking, they had already passed the point where they could meet the schedule even if they did that.
With Team 7’s survival on the line, Director Yoo-uk finally exploded.
“I think it’s just a waste of time to put our heads together and worry about this. Three days from now, each of you bring a plan and gather again in the small conference room. Bundle, it’s a bundle meeting! Whether it turns into porridge or rice, bring something, anything. If you can’t think of anything, stab a knife into a foam board and bring that. I’m about to just drop dead. Anyway, no matter what! We’re going all the way to the end with the concept and plan we decide on that day. You can sleep as much as you want when you get fired, so don’t sleep! Got it?! I said don’t sleep!”
Bundle meeting.
It was the name Director Yoo uk gave to an idea meeting, meaning they should hide a brilliant idea in a bundle and bring it in.
While running a project, it was actually extremely rare for a concept to come out right away that fit well and satisfied everyone.
Like the belief that the end of design is the deadline day, something that looks decent today looks strange when you see it tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow you want to throw it away.
If there were no deadline day, the end of design would be the day the designer dies.
The way to reduce this kind of wasted time was for each team member to directly make a plan based on their own idea and compete.
You could also gain the team members’ various ways of looking at the project, and sometimes several proposals complemented each other and merged into one.
On a big project like this, having an outcome come from your own idea was truly exciting.
However, team members would pull all-nighters hoping their plan would be chosen, and the director had to take responsibility and choose an idea that could actually win. Either way, it was nerve racking.
Team 7 had no time right now. With too few people and a project started late, they had to find an idea as quickly as possible.
“What are you doing! Move! Na Geonshin! Are you walking? Go to Gwangseong University and dig up something. Hurry!”
[Project: Gwangseong University Sports Center Design Competition
Site: Wolgye-dong, Nowon-gu, Seoul.
Zoning: Urban area, Type 2 general residential area, road access, school
Site area: About 9,550 m2 (athletic field site)
Use: Educational facility, sports facility, student convenience facilities, etc.
Goal: Expand a sports center to replace the narrow athletic field. Change the university’s outdated image and create it as a city landmark.]
Assistant Manager Soomin studied the project overview carefully. Then she looked at Gwangseong University’s athletic field.
‘The field looks even smaller than I expected. It’s like an elementary school field. If we hadn’t come for a site visit, we would have been in trouble.’
Site visit.
The first process you do when preparing architectural planning.
The condition of the land where the building will go, the surrounding conditions, the different emotions you feel when you enter the real scale in person.
All of that experience is the start of the plan. These days, even if you just go online, street view is so well made, but back then, it was an era where you had to do the legwork and go look up everything yourself.
After lunchtime, Team 7 stood in the middle of the athletic field and looked around. Team Leader Seungjin, taking pictures of the site here and there with a digital camera, spoke in an irritated tone.
“But why is that bastard Geonshin still not here? He said he’d come right after class. I told him to take some pictures!”
“It’s good that the site is between the company and the school, at least.”
“Exactly. He should’ve been here already……”
From far away, they could see Geonshin running toward them in a fluster.
“Huh? Why is he running from over there?”
“I know, right?”
“Pant, pant! I-I’m sorry. I was eating at the student cafeteria and lost track of time.”
Eating.
At Geonshin’s words, Assistant Manager Soomin covered her ears.
Because she could predict what would happen next.
“What, eating? You’re late and you’re saying you came after stuffing your face? Is this guy insane? The bundle meeting is right around the corner.”
Team Leader Mo Seungjin’s shouting voice.
Anyway, that temper of his had not gone anywhere.
Well, around this time, the company was full of people like that. You could find them anywhere.
“Take the camera! Hurry and shoot every corner.”
“Yes. Understood.”
Geonshin took the digital camera in his hand and stared at it blankly for a moment. How long had it been since he had touched something like this?
‘Later, you can do everything with one phone, but back then you had to carry this big thing around.’
The scenery of a university just starting its second semester was lively. Everyone wore baggy cargo pants like a uniform. Students sometimes walked around wearing beanies even on hot days, with the back of their hair grown out like MacGyver.
Seeing them gathered in small groups, laughing and chatting, the campus vibe came into Geonshin’s frame.
‘If I go to school too, I’ll lie down like that… Lie down? Ah. I was an architecture major. Damn it.’
If you were walking around campus and saw zombies at an odd hour, those would be architecture students worn down by all-nighters.
Geonshin, long graduated, had briefly dreamed of campus romance after regressing, but soon remembered he was an architecture student and immediately gave up. Not a chance.
‘Ha. I’m jealous of that kind of romance, but somehow it feels awkward.’
That was because students were enjoying conversation on a few benches or narrow stands, not on an empty athletic field. With the unusually small athletic field sitting completely empty, it looked even more shabby.
Among universities in Seoul, Gwangseong University’s campus was especially small. Since it was filled with heavy, massive buildings, the athletic field here looked like a cicada clinging to an old tree, barely hanging on. Along the boundary that met the sidewalk, a high wall surrounded the entire campus.
Gwangseong University was wrapped in a veil, like a fortress within the city.
“Well. I can understand why they want to build a sports center on the athletic field.”
Team Leader Seungjin, having roughly grasped the campus conditions, opened his mouth.
“An athletic field that’s 90 meters by 70 meters, this is… The campus retaining wall is so high and long that you can’t really recognize the school buildings from the street. Their employment rate at major companies is high, but their name value is low compared to their performance. They’re trying to change their image by building one landmark type building.”
Assistant Manager Soomin flipped through the printed materials and said,
“Since the campus is north of the river… It isn’t a planned city built around roads, so the houses and buildings tend to be placed without order. It’s hard to find new buildings nearby, and since the houses are old too, I think the campus is affected by that.”
“That’s why those Mirim Architecture guys seduced their father-in-law into building a new building. Talking up a landmark.”
Geonshin looked toward the campus main gate.
The word campus did not even fit, it looked like an entrance to a high school, like there should be discipline committee students standing there.
It was August 2002 right now. Once December passed, construction would begin on Hongmungwan at the Hongdae campus main gate.
A project that would cost 100 billion won, it would become a new face for the Hongdae three-way intersection that did not really have a landmark.
‘Mirim Architecture probably predicted the coming trend. After that, new buildings would go up at university campus entrances one after another. But expanding a campus sideways on expensive Seoul land would have been difficult because of budget, so building upward was probably the best option.’
A landmark within a city is usually chosen as something that stands out easily from any location. Like the Big Dipper in the sky, it serves to confirm where you are. If you see it often, it naturally settles into the citizens’ awareness. As a symbol.
‘Namsan Tower is the representative case.’
From the campus entrance, Geonshin looked at the empty athletic field. Then he recalled what employee Kim Song had said. After using the folder coupon and seeing Gwangseong University’s future, Geonshin understood her complaints.
‘At first, they probably expected a massive sports center to become a landmark of Nowon-gu, but it did not happen at all. If things changed, they should have been satisfied accordingly, but in a place this cramped, why are they so greedy?’
The sports center Mirim Architecture would build in the future.
It ended up tightening the already narrow campus’s breathing room even more, in other words, it only increased examples of improper construction.
The wrong meeting between an architecture firm that held up splendor, and a president who bit the bait without hesitation. From there, Gwangseong University took its first wrong step. And the harm fell squarely on the students.
Like employee Kim Song, it produced a mass of graduates who felt disgust toward the campus.
As always, an architect’s worry did not always bring only good results. Gwangseong University’s campus was a clear example showing how much an architect must think deeply and draw lines carefully.
‘But we can set it right again.’
Geonshin opened the status window.
‘There is someone who can solve this campus’s bleak future.’
Geonshin selected a folder use coupon. In an instant, the wide athletic field became a sea of folders.
Between the gold folders aligned like the Matrix, Geonshin’s consciousness began to dig its way through. Swimming through the brightly flashing folders like a dolphin, he found that name.
[Dominique Perrault]
A French architect who became a once-in-a-generation star at a young age in his thirties.
One of the two projects of Perrault that Geonshin recalled was the world’s largest library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
In the design competition carried out to transform the aging French National Library into the world’s largest library, he defeated the world’s famous architects and won at the shocking age of thirty six.
Among the brilliant plans of the stars, the reason Perrault’s work was chosen was restraint and President Mitterrand’s foresight in recognizing that restraint.
It was a rare case where these two met and produced the best synergy.
Four concise towers stood facing each other in an L shape on a vast site, but what people focused on was the enormous garden, the empty space, embraced by those towers. In that garden, people studied under the shade of trees, drank coffee, and rested.
What Gwangseong University needed was hidden inside Perrault’s work.
‘What meaning would Gwangseong University’s campus have when seen through his eyes?’
Standing before the folder, Geonshin reached out with excitement and exhilaration.
The gold folder opened its mouth and ignited with light, and countless images and texts were absorbed into Geonshin’s body like a sponge.
[Used one folder use coupon. Deducted -1]
‘Good…!’
Dominique Perrault’s consciousness and way of thinking assimilated into Geonshin, as if they had become the same person.
When Geonshin opened his eyes and looked at the campus, the three-dimensional world before him began to writhe.
The tiny grains of sand on the athletic field floor trembled one by one as if an earthquake had struck, then slowly rose. As if gravity had vanished.
Geonshin stared blankly and watched the mysterious sight.
‘At last, the true form appears! The meaning of this land as interpreted by Perrault!’
The ground split, and the walls that blocked his view tore like paper. The campus athletic field, transforming like a Transformer, came to Geonshin as a shock.
‘No, this is…!’
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Dominique Perrault
Leave a Reply