Hanwoori Korean Garden is the first public Korean garden in the Pacific Northwest America region, and it will be completed in 2023 or 2024.

The master plan was designed based on the traditional design elements of Korean gardens, including a traditional Korean pavilion, open courtyard, flower steps, walls, and tree gardens. While most of the design elements use some of the traditional elements in Korean garden design, our design proposal of the surrounding walls of the garden utilizes a computation design technique to create a contemporary design aesthetic using traditional clay tiles of Korea. This design effort is associated with one of the interests that blur the boundary between traditional and contemporary design. The design of the main stone memorial, located in the center of the garden, is also derived from a historic motif pattern of the Korean flag, the symbol of Yin and Yang.

LaWaSo Ground is a contemporary memorial and community ground of (La)nd, (Wa)ter, and (So)il designed to help bridge some of the cultural dichotomies of our time through the lens of material culture. Sited on the lawn of First Christian Church, the installation draws from an acknowledgment of the silenced and suppressed voices of the past, and advocates for more diverse inclusion in the future.

LaWaSo Ground combines stone elements that echo the extracted topography of the limestone quarries found in the region with landscape mounds reminiscent of Indigenous earthworks along the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys. Indiana limestone plays a complicated symbolic role, referencing its use in the construction of civic monuments across the United States, while the mounds present an alternative interpretation of how civic space can be conceived and celebrated. Water is the common element linking the two formal pieces of the installation and is manifested in several ways. In a primal sense, water is the elemental force that first carved its way through the bedrock of Indiana, exposing dramatic edifices of stone to the original inhabitants of the land and soil beneath our feet. More recently, water has been a critical tool in the quarrying and fabrication of the very stone exposed by the rivers and creeks coursing through Indiana. Thematically, water is present in the physically engraved patterns across the stonework. These pattern motifs were designed by the Indigenous artist Katrina Mitten, a citizen of the Myaamia Nation of Oklahoma.

While the primary formal thrust of the installation relies heavily on horizontal manifestations of the project title’s thematic content, a singular vertical element presents an opportunity for dialogue with the planar nature of the composition. This vertical gesture incorporates components that align the site with significant times in the solar calendar, such as the Summer and Winter Solstices, as well as geospatial indices including the cardinal directions of North and South. The temporal and spatial alignment of the vertical figure loosely references similarly purposed vertical elements of certain indigenous cultures, as well as many other cultures across the globe.

The vertical marker incorporates both natural and artificial components, expressing a collaborative contradiction of material cultures that connect the installation to its physical context - namely within the limestone and earthen masonry of Saarinen’s First Christian Church and the bronze of Moore’s Large Arch. In addition to a purposefully utilitarian metal structure supporting decorative limestone panels, the vertical marker also incorporates a metal bracket system that has been developed by Jeeyea Kim and her partner Dorian Bybee in concert with the Advanced Manufacturing team at the Cummins Technical Center. The pairing of CNC-milled limestone panels and the 3D printed metal brackets aims to fuse the practical and ornamental dimensions of material culture referenced throughout the installation.

Design Team

Jeeyea Kim + Dorian Bybee, haptiK|B

Katrina Mitten, Myaamia bead artist

Tyden Graverson

Brian B. Kim

Sponsors and Grants

Bybee Stone Co.

City of Columbus

Cummins, Inc.

Indiana University, Eskenazi School and Arts and Humanities Councils

SYNLawn Indiana

Between Imitation and Arbitration is a research project funded through a Platform Research Fellowship, which is an interdisciplinary research laboratory in the contemporary arts and humanities at Indiana University. The research aimed to identify a distinct material culture significance and its vernacular application styles present in the south-central Indiana region, along the “Stone Belt” of Indiana limestone. Indiana limestone has been utilized for some of the most iconic American architecture works in the last two centuries; however, it also has been used broadly and distinctively around the Stone Belt region, where the material is quarried and fabricated.

The research aimed to identify vernacular architectural details found in Indiana limestone applications in residential architecture, including a plethora of styles and characters available to analyze. The study particularly focused on regional housing built during the mature period of Indiana limestone production (1890-1930), when the population was growing rapidly due to large numbers of incoming workers and their families. Among several subjects of this study, the foremost task was to explore the distinct application styles of Indiana limestone in residential architecture, based on the owner’s socio-economic status and professional resources.

Through extensive analytic research, we discovered various styles of limestone columns framing the public faces of private lives -- front porches. Among many limestone column styles, we reimagined three columns associated with some of the values and characteristics of the material culture that we studied – inherently Hoosier – through the imitation and arbitration of their silhouette and texture.

BeeBreeders Design Competition Proposal

Our proposal for an Iceland Volcano Museum is inspired by various well known tourist circles in Iceland, such as the Golden Circle (Gullni Hringurinn) in the South, and the Diamond Circle in Northern Iceland. While these prominent tourist circuits connect most of the popular national attractions, we propose a regional tourist circuit - the Mývatn Circle - for promoting regional attractions around Lake Mývatn. The new museum at the heart of this competition would anchor this new regional tourist circle, and would be called the Mývatn Circle Museum, or Mývatn Hringurinn Museum. The new museum would be a natural starting point for touring the beautiful attractions scattered around the region, and would help tourists understand the wide variety of destinations available nearby, as well as the history and culture of the region.

The formal aspects of the architectural design of the Mývatn Circle Museum are inspired by “pseudo craters” that are scattered around Lake Mývatn, while the green roof system references one type of vernacular architecture on Iceland – the “Turf House”. Our design proposes two circular buildings –one dedicated to parking, while the other is the museum itself - which are partially imbedded in the ground and blended into the surrounding landscape. The subtle topographic changes and the rounded geometries of the “pseudo craters” at Lake Mývatn are reinterpreted in our project through topological manipulation of the roof structure of each building. In some places, the building edges are perfectly blended with the surrounding landscape, but at the main entry points connecting the parking structure and the museum, the roofs are lifted up and allow for the experience of a dynamic entry sequence in to the museum.

The museum program dictates the locations of a series of circles within the site, which are then superimposed and intersected, in order to develop an intriguing roofscape. This is then manipulated by blending the tufted roofscape into the surrounding landscape along the edges of the building, and creates several roof access points from the ground level. The Internal edges of the circle intersections on the roof are sheared, in order to provide natural light to the main lobby and reception area in the museum.

Un(bespoke) is an investigation in to the use of a local material, Indiana limestone, in the production of a contemporary design object - a modular table accessory that can be arranged in a variety of formations. The design stems from a famous mathematical problem, the Haberdasher’s Puzzle, which solves for how to dissect a square into pieces that can then be reconstituted in to an equilateral triangle.

The design is implemented through the overlapping of circles that are based upon geometrical dispositions in the initial square formation. Each intersection of these circles becomes activated by a vertical movement, eventually creating a continuous rippling effect on the surface of the pieces. When the pieces are rotated from the square configuration to the triangular configuration, the flat edges at the perimeter of the initial square become the interior edge conditions of the triangle, while the undulated interior edges of the initial square are then revealed on the perimeter of the triangle. In addition to the simple square and triangle that result, the project allows for many other geometrical variations as the user experiments with the pieces.

Photo Credit: Anna Powell Teeter

Finalist, Trades District Public Art Competition

Design Team: Jennifer Riley and haptiK/B

Bloomington Grand Barbican is a public work of art that is a manifestation of the unique community from which it takes its name. Its character is aspirational, yet firmly rooted in local values. The Barbican is situated in a way that it acts as both a community beacon, as well as a public destination. As a beacon, its height, bright colored panels, and glowing light make it easily discernible from a distance, and thus provides public way-finding within the new Trades District. As a public destination, it provides a playful and inviting space of community in the heart of the new district.

Limestone seating, table height plinths and seating at the base of the beacon invites a range of activity from meeting up for tea and picnics during the workday to exercise, lounging and dreaming. The nearby larger area left open for flexible use; activities such as yoga, children’s birthday parties, athletic group meeting points, etc.

As the site is visible and accessible from many directions, it can serve as a reference point for where you are in the city. The purpose of the design is to reflect the artwork as a focus for pivoting around the site, while the shaping of the beacon itself suggests dynamic centrifugal force. Curved sheets of perforated steel stretch skyward as a bright, colorful, optimistic expression of renewal, hope and faith in a shared future. The Indiana limestone pedestals speak to the history and landscape surrounding Bloomington.

These materials are taken directly from the waste of local fabrication processes - had they not been used in the work of public art, they would have been consigned as scrap. This acts as a public expression of sustainability - demonstrating Bloomington’s commitment to preserving a better world for future generations - and it is a bold statement that powerfully connects this work of public art to the actual lives of the community that it will serve.

Indiana University Bicentennial Medal Design, designed by Jeeyea Kim

In the two centuries that Indiana University has proudly existed, the world has seen an ever increasing degree of change at all scales and in all contexts. One constant, during that period of time, has been Indiana University’s strong commitment to academic excellence and community service. Indiana University has consistently increased its reach and has continued to bring about positive progress through research, service, faculty, staff, and alumni – regionally, nationally, and globally.

The design of the Bicentennial medal reflects Indiana University’s strong network in Indiana, and its impact and trajectory outward to our country and the world. The initial concept of the medal manifests in two distinct images.

The first is the image of water drops that create a beautiful rippling effect on the surface of a body of water. This image lead me to think of the strong influence that each campus/center has in the state of Indiana, and the idea is exhibited by different sized circles and their intersections, which indicates the collaborative relationships among the academic and medical campuses, as well as the administrative centers.

The second conceptual image is of aviation routes that link all of the important gateways of the world. This reminded me of IU’s Global Gateway Network, which connects the community of Indiana University to the nation and beyond. The trajectory of the circles emphasizes our connection to the wider world.

Shadow of an Unknown Bird is a collaborative project with Cummins, IUCA+D and Indiana University. It is one of the largest 3D printed works of art in the world. To construct this immense sculpture the design team utilized recent innovation in 3D printing called BAAM (Big Area Additive Manufacturing).

The design team took on the challenge of responding to Columbus' legendary public sculptures, ultimate example of the progressive art of their time. Henry Moore's bronze sculpture, Large Arch (1971), exemplary of early modernist 19-20th century art and techniques is located in the plaza of the Cleo Rogers Memorial Library by architect I.M. Pei (Columbus, IN). And Jean Tiguely's Chaos (1974), a late modernist kinetic sculpture of found and repurposed still, speaks to the city's mechanics engineering legacy, located in The Commons renovated by Cotter Kim upon the original rame of Cesar Pelli.

Following those examples, Shadow of an Unknown Bird, reflects the technological and artistic advancements of our time using materials and processes of 3D printing, digital metrology, CNC milling and water-jet plasma cutting.

Design Team:

Jeeyea Kim; architect and IU faculty member, Jennifer Riley; artist, T. Kelly Wilson; architect and Director of IUCA+D; John Repp; Cummins engineer, Phil Shelton; Cummins engineer

Supporting Partnership:

Additive Engineering Solutions, Bybee Stone Co., Exhibit Columbus, and Sabic Innovative Plastic

FMRL - Ephemeral Permanence - is a completely modular limestone wall panel system, composed of 3 units that can be arranged in a nearly infinite array of layouts. Typically, the term modularity implies practical blandness, but FMRL wall panels prove it can be elegant and beautiful. Because the system is modular, designers are free to create their own composition, at whatever scale they like - reaping the cost benefits of a modular system, while producing a design that looks entirely custom.

The design intent of FMRL is to manifest a spatial and formal impression of ephemeral movement, captured in the immutable strength and timelessness of limestone. Our modern world is filled with touch screens that convey movement and materiality through pixels that have no physical relationship to the content they show, and this project inverts that relationship - conveying a sense of the flow of time through physically static material, and inviting you to run your hands across it. 

Lake Baths/ ArkXsite Design Competition (2015)

When considering the design of a man-made environment in such a spectacular natural context, it is absolutely necessary for the design to speak the language of the landscape. If on listens to the Serra da Estrela, one hears an ancient narrative of potent folding tectonic forces, soaring and plunging masses of earth and stone, and beautifully shearing and eroding pressure.

The result is a dramatic landscape, whose folds and fissures create natural programs ideal for hiking and exploration. Our project speaks this same language of folding and bending, creating a series of spaces from the manipulation of a continuous strip of landscape that flows, follows, diverges, and returns to the terrain. It is at once a transformation of the landscape that emphasizes the very nature of Serra da Estrela, and a man-made space that is transformed by the landscape. Fault lines cut and fold the spaces along sight lines created by the landscape and the hiking trail leading to the site, affecting a space that neither blends in to the landscape, nor rejects it - but in fact, the Lake Baths are a conversation with the landscape.

Foliated Towers draws on a number of sources for inspiration:  NYC icons like the Empire State Building and Chrystler Building, budding flowers, New York City’s long zoning code history, and Le Corbusier’s Plan Voison.   From the icons, our project draws upon their sense of ornament and monumentality, while we are more literally inspired by the sense of movement and growth captured in the act of a budding flower.  Since the Tenament Act of 1901, New York City has been a pioneer in the development of zoning codes that continue to shape the city, and Foliated Towers sets out to both conform to and challenge notions of building massing related to urban quality of life. 

Our project lightly references Corbu’s Plan Voison - as an “Architectural Urbanism” module -but replaces its concrete geometric pragmatism with the surficial freedom allowed by a structural steel facade system, as well as replacing the notion of “public park” with “public garden”, and elevating it 15m above the street.