Be-Fore

South Korea

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Be-Fore

South Korea

Firm

a.co.lab

Type

Cultural › Cultural Center
Industrial › Water Facility

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2024

SIZE

10,000 sqft - 25,000 sqft

BUDGET

$500K - 1M

The ‘Be-Fore’ is a renovation project for idle areas of the Sihwa Industrial Complex sewage treatment plant.Although Siheung-si had planned a water-themed park for nearby families, we found upon visiting the site that this former industrial facility possessed unique qualities within the urban context. The site still bears traces of its past, and we felt that planning a program by a few decision-makers in a short time would serve only as an image, lacking practicality and ethics. Instead, we began to consider what the minimum elements could be to allow various activities to take place against the backdrop of the already existing space.This preserves the current state while gradually introducing the program, allowing an experience of the site’s atmosphere, ruin, and history of the previous purification facilities.

We hoped visitors would feel the same spatial impression that we first felt at the site. It is a dark, rough, and irregular environment that may feel somewhat uncomfortable, but at the same time, it is a place where there is a sense of vastness beyond human scale and an unfamiliar space. Therefore, we tried not to damage the originality of the existing space and its impression by intervening with too many fixed facilities.

Ironically, these intentions were strengthened by the reduction in project costs (from 4.2 billion won to 1 billion won) during the design process. As a result, we aimed to preserve the originality of the existing space and its atmosphere by minimizing the addition of fixed facilities.The scope of the work from the initial plan targeting 10 condensing tanks was narrowed down to 5. By uncovering the principles, order, and context of the existing sewage facilities, we created an open sequence that connects previously buried civil engineering structures, allowing the water purification system to be experienced as it is.

All materials added to the existing facilities were selected to be light and airy, suitable for temporary intervention, and the method of renovation was also planned to be at a level that a general multi-generational housing construction contractor can perform. We tried to realize the unconscious community that is inherent in all of us as an architectural form, using inexpensive contemporary materials and minimal architectural gestures, while maintaining the original form as much as possible. We tried to use common materials with sincerity. Light frame timber, such as two-by-fours and two-by-sixes, was used for the circular staircase, atrium columns, and eaves. The inspection deck flooring is checkered steel plate, common on construction sites, while the canopy and skylight are made of aluminum and single-layer acrylic, often used in multi-family house windows. The added elements, being cheap contemporary materials, rough walls, and translucent plastic covers with uneven light patterns, evoke a sense of community embedded in the subconscious as an architectural form. It is the common formal sense that we have discovered between the diametrically opposed abandoned industrial facilities and the primitive and fundamental space of humanity.

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Be-Fore

South Korea

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