Architects:Heesoo Kwak and IDMM Architects

Area :2328 m²

Year :2015

Photographs :Kyungsub Shin

Architect In Charge : Heesoo Kwak

City : Gimpo-si

Country : South Korea

Buildings of the Gimpo new town, where everything looks as new, clean and as fresh as fishes caught in a milk bottle. Well-structured roads and districts look like a checkerboard that has never been used. Through local communities, this place is where ordinary lives and sentiments have just started to settle down and will attempt to engage with different urban cultures and establish its own identity.

The closest church is sitting on a corner site of Unyang-dong, Gimpo. Words like corner, edge and vertex connote the existence of more than one line or surface. The church has a façade divided by two conflicting with each other at the vertex of the site. One is a solid and fragmented concrete, proposed by considering the relationship with apartment residents, and the other is a transparent glass that opens views to the vast park and also to the church’s worship services. The chapel structured like the bleachers is designed to increase the capacity of the space built on a compact site. Small rooms are positioned behind of the inclined surface of the bleachers and on the top section of it so that the church can make the best use of its space. Especially, the outside stairs connecting the ground and the rooftop works as an important element defining the exterior of church, and the vivid movement of its users makes the church’s architectural statement more dynamic. The rooftop space which can host outdoor worship services is open for church communities as well as for locals.

The closest church is a place of worship, a cultural venue and public architecture for the local apartment community which was being choked by commercialism. A rooftop cross can’t be found here, but here the cross is leaning on the wall and speaking with a humble voice. Big resonance stirs among listeners rather than among speakers who deliver a moving story, and the sublimity dwells in intimacy not in hierarchy. The cross descended onto the earth will cast a shadow like a shaded tree and will share a story of life with people on the street.

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