White Block Gallery / SsD

Architect: SsD
Location: Heyri Art Valley, Korea
Team: Jinhee Park AIA + John Hong AIA, LEED (principals in charge), Frederick Peter Ortner, Donguk Lee, Jiseok Park, Taesoo Kim, Christoph Schäfer, Juho Lee, Marcela Delgado, Soojung Rhee, Aleta Budd, Okhyun Kim, Eli Allen, Jeff Niemasz, Eunkyoung Cho, Brian Vester, Ryan Welch, Jeong Jun Song
Associate Architect: Dyne Architects
Structural Design: Matt Johnson, SGH Inc.
Structural Engineer: S+RC
Lighting Consultant: Project Concept K
Construction Manager: Hanmi Parsons Co., Ltd
Photographs: Chang Kyun Kim

The White Block Gallery is a 1500m2 exhibition and cultural space at the heart of the Heyri Art Valley in South Korea. A matrix of 3 solid gallery volumes carefully positioned creates 7 additional galleries in a compact but open ended configuration. Designed to showcase global contemporary art from super sized sculpture and paintings to multi-media installations, the spaces are unique in proportion and lighting allowing curators to accommodate new future forms of art and media. Integration with the landscape of the prominent lake-front site is also of crucial importance: The result places the intense and controlled experience of art side-by-side with informal social and landscape interactions. Passive heating and ventilation are integrated into the art house’s high efficiency environmental systems and runoff control measures become part of the spatial experience of art.