Byoung Cho

Earth Works: Houses by Byoung Cho offers a unique glimpse into the residential buildings of one of Korea's most influential architects. This visually stunning monograph combines photography, plans, drawings, paintings and models to provide an exclusive overview of this rarely published aspect of Byoung's work. Focused entirely around fifteen private and rarely seen residences, the book takes as its starting point some of his earliest projects - Concrete Box House (2004) and Earth House (2009) - which explore the emotional impact of place through low-intervention and minimalist rural structures. At its core, this book aims to intertwine the theoretical underpinnings of land architecture with practical project descriptions, creating a holistic narrative that bridges the conceptual and the concrete. It also explores Korean architecture's enduring concern with establishing a relationship with the land, something which is rooted in the country's distinct terrain and cultural foundations. A number of insightful texts by Byoung complement this elegant and poetic survey, exploring his architectural influences alongside the ideas of experience, perception and the Korean concepts of mak and bium (imperfection and emptiness).

The second book in the My Life as an Architect series, looking at the buildings that have shaped the practice and outlook of the celebrated Korean architect Byoung Cho. Byoung Cho is Korea’s leading architect, with almost three decades of experience shaping the city where he grew up and still lives. This companion to Kengo Kuma: My Life as an Architect in Tokyo presents twenty-nine portraits of the buildings and districts of Seoul that have most influenced Cho, from a more than six-hundred-year-old palace to the Gangnam district made infamous by the K-pop hit, a fourteen-meter-square concrete box, and a number of his own designs. Byoung Cho mixes personal asides with architectural and historical detail to build up a multilayered picture of the city. Lively texts are interspersed with the architect’s own drawings and elegant photographs printed with a sepia tint. 62 color illustrations