Dongsei Kim's research mapping of the Korean Demilitarized Zone was selected as one of forty international works in the Experimental Landings exhibition, located at Nolan Park 14, Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture GAUD Outpost on Governors Island in New York City. Research assistant Elise Park (BArch '25) at NYIT assisted with the mapping. The exhibit, curated by Jonathan A. Scelsa, David Erdman, and Tulay Atak (Pratt Institute), engages “architectural images of land in the age of climate crisis,” and was open to the public from July 8 through September 1, 2022.

EXPERIMENTAL LANDINGS

Pratt GAUD

Exper­i­men­tal Land­ings is an exhi­bi­tion that inter­ro­gates how design­ers assert agency through the rep­re­sen­ta­tion, orga­ni­za­tion, and for­ma­tion of land. ​“Land­ings” is thus intend­ed to ​“acti­vate” a famil­iar archi­tec­tur­al term that rec­og­nizes the often bina­ry and dis­so­ci­at­ed realms of site ver­sus prop­er­ty, ground ver­sus ter­ri­to­ry. By shift­ing the term from noun to verb, the exhi­bi­tion seeks to repo­si­tion land as an active agent with a broad­er con­text, ter­ri­to­ry, and com­mu­ni­ty. By explor­ing its ​“medi­atric” poten­tial a crit­i­cal project may pro­voke and high­light land’s intrin­sic abil­i­ty to engage and inform broad­er socio-polit­i­cal and/​or cli­ma­to­log­i­cal con­se­quences. Under­stood as an elas­tic and open-end­ed frame­work of con­sid­er­a­tion this col­lec­tive exhi­bi­tion of work will show­case how archi­tec­ture and land­scape exper­i­ments across ​“land” address new def­i­n­i­tions of for­mal prac­tice across sev­er­al the­mat­ics includ­ing arti­fi­cial earths, seed­ing resilience, imag­ing ground, and map­ping maintenance. 

533 Places: Tracing the Forgotten Places in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)

This map sheds light on the forgotten 533 places within the Korean DMZ. The 250-km long and 4-km wide buffer zone has bisected the Korean peninsula since the end of the Korean War in 1953. Void of significant human settlement, a vast amount of vegetation and wildlife cover the DMZ. Often referred to as an"involuntary" park, many mischaracterize the DMZ as untouched nature, despite its anthropogenic origins. Nevertheless, the "533 Places" map traces and activates the memories and histories of the abandoned 486 villages, 13 mountains, 12 rivers, and two cities marked within the boundaries of the DMZ in the 1:50,000 Armistice Agreement map from 1953. This map challenges the dominant representations of the DMZ as a tabula rasa site. Furthermore, this research raises questions on conflict-induced arbitrary lines inscribed onto natural processes and people's daily lives that often cause long-term human suffering.  

Link to the Exhibition (Pratt Institute)

Link to the Governors Island Event