072 FRAME CRITIQUEgabled volumes that they support a singular roof. It
seems that the gable has become an archetypal feature
of a residential building for the architect. In his later
works, such as the GSI office building, he also used
combinations of various gables to form one building.
In the Durastack Headquarters, however, a gable was
only applied to two volumes. As 4 out of 6 volumes
were turned into hexagonal bodies, the two gables were
further emphasised, and the theme ‘gabled volume
as pillar’ transformed to the theme ‘a house within a
house’.
The architect continues to find a subtle balance
between multivariance and simplicity. He politely
refused the client’s proposal to build each volume as a
respectively different wooden showroom. Furthermore,
by continuing to use similar brick and masonry methods
in each volume, he added diversity to the volume’s size
and its opening. In the opening, one can appreciate his
process of contemplation and the balance maintained
between the façade and the volume, adopting De Stijl’s
method of opening and enlivening the façade rather
than simply making a hole. Each volume appears to
be a masonry structure, but as part of what he calls a
practice of ‘architectural deception’ they are actually
dressed bricks. This is a subtle deception. In order to
reveal this deception, the architect also prepared a gap
of 25mm between the volume and the roof’s surface.
Min Woosik’s building is formidable at night. The
subtle space and the distinctive features of the material
come alive especially under the lighting. No lighting
is installed in the ceiling, but placed across the floor
in a delicate manner. A primeval fundamentality is
emphasised at day, and a phenomenological sensation
is brought to life at night.Café TONNCafé TONN is a 30 × 10m-sized building and it was
designed at the same time as the GSI office building.
While the GSI office building is a white gabled form,
Café TONN is composed of black benches and cloth.
The four monolithic pillars situated in the corners in
deep black and the downward curved lines give off the
vibe of a monastery rather than a café. The architect
intended this building to become a ‘monastery of
coffee’, and expressed interest in curved lines in his
early drafts. The design traversed the gable-form
curved lines, the curved lines that float in a concave
manner in the left and right of the interior, four pillars
placed in four separate directions like the wings of a
windmill, and finally arrived at this final form. If the
Durastack Headquarters is archetypically constructed,
Café TONN is archetypically woven.On the first floor, the space opens through the large
glass that leads to the yard. On the second floor, one
senses the oppressive nature of the roof. The roof height
shifts from 2.7m to 4.2m, and as it gets higher, one
feels an increasing sense of expansion and a growing
emphasis on the opening of the landscape towards
nature. The architect said that he wanted to lower the
roof to create an even more dramatic oppressive feeling.
It is disappointing, however, that the opening that
leads to the second floor is positioned at the 2.7m level,
mitigating the sense of oppressiveness, and that there
is a lack of a mezzanine level to experience the curved
surface more intimately.
The structured method behind this building is rather
unique and controversial. When viewed from the
exterior, four large pillars support the entire building,
and the ceiling of the second floor appears to hold the
four pillars with a tensile force. It appears to resemble
the structural method used in Lina Bo Bardi’s São
Paulo Museum of Art. However, upon approaching the
pillars, one is surprised by how the floor surface on the
second floor and the pillars stand slightly separate from
each other. The element that was supporting the second
floor was not the four large pillars in the corners but the
small round pillars in the building’s interior. More than
this, it was not the corner pillars that were holding up
the curved ceiling surface of the second floor but the 52
mullion bars of the second floor windows. The mullion
bars are positioned 1m from one another, and while
only half of them are needed for structural purposes,
they were positioned at 1m distance for the sake of
spatial rhythm. In this way, the actual structure is quite
different from the expected structure when seen from
the outside.
Mies used pillars that do not hold anything in his
Crown Hall or the Seagram Building, as they are
ornamental pillars that depict the sense of order in a
building. As a method that goes against the honesty of
a structure, it hides the structure or makes the structure
a device in this deception. Here we can observe the
architect’s inner contemplation and a new attempt.
The structural method behind Café TONN recalls
the tradition of using outer layers as passed down by
Semper. In this tradition, the essential element of
architecture does not lie with the structure but with the
outer layer. This tradition is in contrast to the Beaux-
Arts tradition filtered down through Kahn. From his
use of a single open space, a building with a blossomed
façade, a building where the structure functions as its
outer layer, and a building where the expressive aspect
of an outer layer or a curtain is emphasised more than
the structural aspect, all reveal how the architect is
attempting something quite different from Durastack
Headquarters. This method of exposing a structurethat is not, and of showing something that doesn’t look
like a structure when it truly is, is what the architect
refers to as ‘architectural deception’. This deception is
accompanied by a twist and a surprise. Sometimes, it
leads to shock, and sometimes, humour. As Nietzsche
said, the artistic hypothesis that lies at the opposite of
truth shines all the more brighter for its falsity. In just
the same way as an actor is praised for his ability to act
as someone else, Café TONN challenges us to rethink
our understanding of structural truth and structural
deception.Two Teachers, Two QuestionsIn order to work at the office of Louis Kahn, Steven
Holl applied and was accepted in 1974. As he was
preparing to leave for Philadelphia, he heard the news
of Kahn’s death when arriving at Philadelphia station
on a return from Bangladesh, and gave up on his new
workplace. The three recent works of Min Woosik
reveal a compositional experiment with buildings at
a 3:1 ratio. These experiments are similar in that they
all carry a strong phenomenological sense and basic
fundamental properties, that architectural deception
cuts across them, and that they all recall the experiments
of Mies, Olgiati, Zumthor, and Herzog. It is very
interesting in that there is both the pursuit of detailed
sensations as well as of fundamental things. The way the
architect deals with architecture in these experiments is
not simple. His research into the fundamental and the
sensational is an approach that he has picked up from
his two teachers, Kahn and Holl. Furthermore, these
are precisely the questions that students of Husserl,
Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty ponder with regards to
existence and the body. With his special commitment to
architecture and the profound depth of his knowledge,
architect Min continues his difficult task of walking the
tightrope of these age-old questions.072 FRAME CRITIQUE
gabled volumes that they support a singular roof. It
seems that the gable has become an archetypal feature
of a residential building for the architect. In his later
works, such as the GSI office building, he also used
combinations of various gables to form one building.
In the Durastack Headquarters, however, a gable was
only applied to two volumes. As 4 out of 6 volumes
were turned into hexagonal bodies, the two gables were
further emphasised, and the theme ‘gabled volume
as pillar’ transformed to the theme ‘a house within a
house’.
The architect continues to find a subtle balance
between multivariance and simplicity. He politely
refused the client’s proposal to build each volume as a
respectively different wooden showroom. Furthermore,
by continuing to use similar brick and masonry methods
in each volume, he added diversity to the volume’s size
and its opening. In the opening, one can appreciate his
process of contemplation and the balance maintained
between the façade and the volume, adopting De Stijl’s
method of opening and enlivening the façade rather
than simply making a hole. Each volume appears to
be a masonry structure, but as part of what he calls a
practice of ‘architectural deception’ they are actually
dressed bricks. This is a subtle deception. In order to
reveal this deception, the architect also prepared a gap
of 25mm between the volume and the roof’s surface.
Min Woosik’s building is formidable at night. The
subtle space and the distinctive features of the material
come alive especially under the lighting. No lighting
is installed in the ceiling, but placed across the floor
in a delicate manner. A primeval fundamentality is
emphasised at day, and a phenomenological sensation
is brought to life at night.Café TONNCafé TONN is a 30 × 10m-sized building and it was
designed at the same time as the GSI office building.
While the GSI office building is a white gabled form,
Café TONN is composed of black benches and cloth.
The four monolithic pillars situated in the corners in
deep black and the downward curved lines give off the
vibe of a monastery rather than a café. The architect
intended this building to become a ‘monastery of
coffee’, and expressed interest in curved lines in his
early drafts. The design traversed the gable-form
curved lines, the curved lines that float in a concave
manner in the left and right of the interior, four pillars
placed in four separate directions like the wings of a
windmill, and finally arrived at this final form. If the
Durastack Headquarters is archetypically constructed,
Café TONN is archetypically woven.On the first floor, the space opens through the large
glass that leads to the yard. On the second floor, one
senses the oppressive nature of the roof. The roof height
shifts from 2.7m to 4.2m, and as it gets higher, one
feels an increasing sense of expansion and a growing
emphasis on the opening of the landscape towards
nature. The architect said that he wanted to lower the
roof to create an even more dramatic oppressive feeling.
It is disappointing, however, that the opening that
leads to the second floor is positioned at the 2.7m level,
mitigating the sense of oppressiveness, and that there
is a lack of a mezzanine level to experience the curved
surface more intimately.
The structured method behind this building is rather
unique and controversial. When viewed from the
exterior, four large pillars support the entire building,
and the ceiling of the second floor appears to hold the
four pillars with a tensile force. It appears to resemble
the structural method used in Lina Bo Bardi’s São
Paulo Museum of Art. However, upon approaching the
pillars, one is surprised by how the floor surface on the
second floor and the pillars stand slightly separate from
each other. The element that was supporting the second
floor was not the four large pillars in the corners but the
small round pillars in the building’s interior. More than
this, it was not the corner pillars that were holding up
the curved ceiling surface of the second floor but the 52
mullion bars of the second floor windows. The mullion
bars are positioned 1m from one another, and while
only half of them are needed for structural purposes,
they were positioned at 1m distance for the sake of
spatial rhythm. In this way, the actual structure is quite
different from the expected structure when seen from
the outside.
Mies used pillars that do not hold anything in his
Crown Hall or the Seagram Building, as they are
ornamental pillars that depict the sense of order in a
building. As a method that goes against the honesty of
a structure, it hides the structure or makes the structure
a device in this deception. Here we can observe the
architect’s inner contemplation and a new attempt.
The structural method behind Café TONN recalls
the tradition of using outer layers as passed down by
Semper. In this tradition, the essential element of
architecture does not lie with the structure but with the
outer layer. This tradition is in contrast to the Beaux-
Arts tradition filtered down through Kahn. From his
use of a single open space, a building with a blossomed
façade, a building where the structure functions as its
outer layer, and a building where the expressive aspect
of an outer layer or a curtain is emphasised more than
the structural aspect, all reveal how the architect is
attempting something quite different from Durastack
Headquarters. This method of exposing a structurethat is not, and of showing something that doesn’t look
like a structure when it truly is, is what the architect
refers to as ‘architectural deception’. This deception is
accompanied by a twist and a surprise. Sometimes, it
leads to shock, and sometimes, humour. As Nietzsche
said, the artistic hypothesis that lies at the opposite of
truth shines all the more brighter for its falsity. In just
the same way as an actor is praised for his ability to act
as someone else, Café TONN challenges us to rethink
our understanding of structural truth and structural
deception.Two Teachers, Two QuestionsIn order to work at the office of Louis Kahn, Steven
Holl applied and was accepted in 1974. As he was
preparing to leave for Philadelphia, he heard the news
of Kahn’s death when arriving at Philadelphia station
on a return from Bangladesh, and gave up on his new
workplace. The three recent works of Min Woosik
reveal a compositional experiment with buildings at
a 3:1 ratio. These experiments are similar in that they
all carry a strong phenomenological sense and basic
fundamental properties, that architectural deception
cuts across them, and that they all recall the experiments
of Mies, Olgiati, Zumthor, and Herzog. It is very
interesting in that there is both the pursuit of detailed
sensations as well as of fundamental things. The way the
architect deals with architecture in these experiments is
not simple. His research into the fundamental and the
sensational is an approach that he has picked up from
his two teachers, Kahn and Holl. Furthermore, these
are precisely the questions that students of Husserl,
Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty ponder with regards to
existence and the body. With his special commitment to
architecture and the profound depth of his knowledge,
architect Min continues his difficult task of walking the
tightrope of these age-old questions.