Chapter 34. A Sense of the Problem
Geonshin returned to school.
After putting the Gwangseong University project out of his mind for a while and coming to the studio, he felt considerably lighter.
That did not mean he was entering an individual competition simply because the project was finished and he had time to spare. Winning a design competition was only the beginning of season two.
Being busy was nothing new to him. There was simply a task in front of him that had to be handled, so he focused on it.
For now, they had decided that the latter stages of the Gwangseong University project would proceed under Team Leader Mo’s leadership.
After all, if a part-time worker suddenly produced high-quality construction drawings out of nowhere, it would be almost impossible for anyone to accept.
How could such a thing be possible unless he had been drawing plans since birth? He had supposedly only been using CAD for about a year, yet he was already producing construction drawings.
Of course, even without supernatural abilities such as his skills, the real Geonshin was a veteran with twenty years of experience who could practically draw plans with his eyes closed.
In any case, the proposal submitted to the design competition had been created within a short period. Only its overall framework had been established. All of the finer details would be worked out during the detailed design phase after they won.
At this stage, the plan went through the process of landing from the ideal into reality.
The reason was none other than the troublesome construction budget.
Moreover, a public facility like this required an extremely strict and detailed cost breakdown. Before his regression, Geonshin had spent countless nights running numbers through Excel just to bring even a small building within budget.
He would reduce one thing, then cut another. But he could not remove reinforcement bars that were structurally important. Eventually, they would even reduce their own professional fees, repeating the same vicious cycle.
In the end, every design came down to money.
Excavation cost money. A single tree cost money. Even every doorknob cost money.
Since construction had to proceed within a fixed budget, submitting an absurd design simply to win would inevitably create problems. If someone thought, We’ll figure something out later, only to exceed the construction budget, the design itself often ended up being changed.
During judging, it was difficult to examine every one of those issues in detail.
In the end, Division 7 decided to hire a subcontractor for the detailed design work on the Gwangseong University project. They did not have enough personnel, and, unusually, President Kang had agreed to it.
Since this was quite different from their original agreement, the members of Division 7 could not help being slightly surprised.
Then again, Division 7 winning the project had not been part of President Kang’s original plan, so it was not entirely strange.
Besides, since President Kang was aiming for the position of interim CEO through the Gwangseong University project, he probably could not tolerate the work being completed carelessly.
With things turning out this way, Geonshin could concentrate on the Korea Architecture Competition for the time being.
Whatever the reason, it was fortunate for him.
“Geonshin, this is an opportunity we barely managed to secure. You know what’ll happen if you don’t win the grand prize, right?”
“Geonshin! You can do it. You know that once you win the grand prize and join the company, you’re coming to Division 7, right?”
“That’s right. At least if you come, Geonshin, I’ll finally have someone to drink with….”
Director Yoo-uk glanced at Team Leader Mo, but Team Leader Mo immediately returned to his seat as though he did not care.
As everyone knew, Team Leader Mo did not drink.
Geonshin noticed Assistant Manager Soomin watching them with a stifled laugh.
Knowing that people were waiting for him like this became another source of motivation for Geonshin.
Over the past few months, he had made memories that he could share with the people of Division 7. Most of them had been filled with exhausting and difficult work, but ironically, those memories had indeed become a foundation for the next chapter of his life.
They had given him the desire to win the grand prize at the architecture competition, become a member of Yeongjo Architecture, and protect its brilliant history.
He hoped this series of events would continue shaping the next chapters of his life until the day he received the Pritzker Prize.
To remember.
To preserve someone’s existence in its entirety.
As important as that was, the human brain was unfortunately designed with circuits of forgetting.
The brain erased memories one by one, beginning with those farthest in the past.
New memories then took their place.
After returning to the age of twenty-three, Geonshin found himself vividly recalling his memories of Changmin, most of which had disappeared before his regression.
It was as if the memories that forgetfulness had erased one by one had been restored along with his regression.
‘Then again, at this point, it only happened six years ago.’
More than anything, after his regression, Geonshin had visited the room where he used to live alone for the first time in twenty years.
There, after discovering a trace of Changmin deep inside his desk drawer, he had been able to recall a final scene he had completely forgotten, as though replaying a film.
At sixteen, after sending Changmin away, Geonshin entered the empty room without him and began gathering the architecture books that had never been returned.
Someone had called and asked that the books be brought back.
Changmin’s belongings had already been collected by Geonshin’s aunt and taken back to the countryside. Only five books remained, sitting alone in front of Geonshin.
As he was about to put the books into his bag, a piece of paper fell out.
‘A library checkout card.’
The checkout card attached to the final page of the book had the name ‘Park Changmin’ written on its last line.
Geonshin stared blankly at the card for a moment.
‘This book will probably pass through many other people’s hands. New names will push Changmin hyung’s name farther and farther back, and eventually it’ll be erased altogether.’
At the time, the young Geonshin had decided to remove that single card before returning the book.
He wanted to preserve Changmin as someone who had been passionate about architecture.
And after all those years, the checkout card had somehow returned to Geonshin’s hands.
It seemed he had brought it with him when he began living alone because his university was far from home.
‘I kept this inside the drawer all this time….’
On the card Geonshin now held, the final line still read ‘Park Changmin’.
He had been crushed beneath the weight of life and forgotten about it for a long time. But after his regression, when those memories returned with startling clarity, his nose stung with emotion.
Seocho-dong 1685-3, Seocho-gu, Seoul.
As time passed, layers accumulated upon the earth one by one. Those layers remained as evidence of their respective eras.
At Seocho-dong 1685-3, where an expensive mixed-use apartment complex was currently being built, two different layers had come to overlap.
The time of tragedy and the time of desire.
‘Within such an ironically stark contrast, people will face other disasters. Then they’ll cover those traces beneath another layer and go on living as though nothing ever happened.’
At this point, when the land had already been cleared and new apartments were being built amid the interests of countless parties, realistically, stopping the construction was impossible.
But as Geonshin looked at the site of a tragedy that had once again been buried beneath capitalism, he found a subject he wanted to present through the Korea Architecture Competition.
It was a “sense of the problem”.
Geonshin wanted to incorporate into architecture an opportunity for people to reflect on how they avoided facing their own true selves when confronted by a problem.
The publicness of architecture in this era.
Of course, transforming old and deteriorated places into new opportunities was important. But before it was too late, he believed that they themselves had to preserve this place as a scar.
And that scar had to remain open to everyone.
When a wound was deep, it sometimes remained as a scar.
A scar on the body could be removed. But scars suffered by the self were not so easily erased.
The scars within the deepest abyss of a person’s heart had to be examined again and again. Only then could the heart develop resilience and begin to heal.
Erasure and healing were fundamentally different things.
Seocho-dong 1685-3 was a spatial scar held within people’s memories, a scar belonging to the city itself.
Avoiding it would not make it disappear. It would only become the fuse for another disaster.
And history would prove that through the countless tragedies that were still to come.
Sitting in the school studio, Geonshin reviewed the remaining schedule and everything he had to submit.
There was no need to think about it any longer.
He simply had to make it.
Without hesitation, he pressed the folder-use coupon.
[You have used one folder-use coupon. Deduction: -1]
A sea of golden folders unfolded before his eyes.
Geonshin’s consciousness was naturally drawn inside, and he began searching for the folder belonging to the architect he wanted.
There was only one architect he needed now.
‘There it is. The man who beat odds of 5,200 to 1.’
[Michael Arad]
In fact, the young Israeli architect’s folder contained only a single work.
When Michael Arad submitted this work to the competition, his United States visa had expired, leaving him in danger of being forced to return to his home country.
Even though he had little money, he refused to give up. He created a model from pieces of plastic and submitted it.
The work that overcame odds of 5,200 to 1 and was selected as the winner:
“Reflecting Absence.”
It was the 9/11 Memorial Park, created to commemorate the victims of the World Trade Center, which had collapsed in a terrorist attack.
The park was designed to honor those who died in the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as well as the victims of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The winning design would be chosen in the coming year of 2004, and the memorial would open on September 11, 2011.
Although the buildings had fallen and many people had died, they left 4,046 square meters of some of New York’s most expensive land empty as a trace of the disaster.
They created voids where the cores of the buildings had once stood and built two artificial waterfalls there. The names of all the victims were inscribed on seventy-six bronze panels surrounding the edges.
They also built a museum underground, allowing people to encounter the scar of their city naturally.
Every year on the evening of September 11, searchlights were projected toward the sky in the Tribute in Light, symbolizing the two fallen towers.
Whether they liked it or not, they looked upon the record of that tragedy every year.
The greatest reason they had created the memorial park was their determination never to allow such a thing to happen again.
The tragedy was also part of their history.
‘Whenever I see this work, I can’t help becoming solemn.’
Geonshin sat down in front of his laptop.
He began wondering what he could possibly accomplish with the old machine. When he pressed the power button, the familiar vibrating noise rang out without fail.
It sounded as though the dying laptop was screaming.
Trying to work while clinging to this pile of scrap metal would be difficult.
‘Should I just ask the TA hyung and use one of the computers in the computer lab? There won’t be any students there at night, and at least those computers should have decent specifications. Ah… At times like this, I miss the computer in the company’s auxiliary room.’
At that moment, he heard the eerie sound of tree branches swaying outside the studio window.
Against the sunset, the gentle rustling revealed that the wind was blowing.
Before he realized it, Geonshin was leaning against the window with his eyes closed.
He remembered climbing the trail behind the school before his regression. Whenever his stress and exhaustion had reached their limits, strangely enough, listening to the sounds of nature had helped him calm down a little.
If he followed the trail behind the school and climbed only a short distance, he would reach a field of reeds.
It felt as though he could see that field before his eyes.
The reeds, now dyed yellow, fluttered in the wind and made a soft rustling sound.
When the wind stopped, the swaying field of reeds once again fell still.
‘The sound of the reeds is almost like crying. And that crying can only be heard when the wind blows.’
As though the sound of weeping were hidden inside the wind.
Geonshin opened his eyes.
He sat before his laptop and stared at the blank monitor.
Suddenly, a thought occurred to him.
‘I want to put sound into the work. Isn’t there some way to do that?’
Even to him, it was an absurd and completely unexpected idea. But the abilities Geonshin had displayed after his regression, along with the projects he had won, were equally absurd.
He crossed his arms and began looking around the studio as he thought.
A voice circled inside his head.
‘Meaningful work. Yes, meaningful work.’
Then he noticed several rolls of yellowed tracing paper lying in a corner.
People always said that presentation panels needed a glossy finish so that the rendering colors would stand out and the work would not be overshadowed by the other submissions.
But could the memory of a disaster be expressed on shining, glossy paper?
What Geonshin wanted to show people was not hope for the future represented by public architecture.
Rather than struggling to erase the memories of a past disaster, he wanted people to reflect on the pain and sorrow contained within those memories.
He wanted them to look at the place that remained as a scar, see themselves reflected within it, and cast away complacent words such as surely.
There were times when a city needed the courage to leave such places open to everyone.
He thought that might be the kind of publicness architecture in this era ought to possess.
In the end, what Geonshin needed to create was not the glitter produced by glossy paper.
It was something analog: the heavy, wordless emotion conveyed by black-and-white photographs upon the simple texture of paper.
‘That’s it. Faded black-and-white photographs!’
He closed his laptop, set it aside, and looked down at the empty desk.
‘This time, I’ll do it this way!’
Notes:
Michael Arad is an Israeli-American architect who is best known for being the designer of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. He won the competition to design the memorial in 2004.
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