33rd Arthur H. Schein Memorial Lecture: Minsuk Cho

The 33rd Arthur H. Schein Memorial Lecture: Minsuk Cho Pavilion Effect Since establishing Mass Studies, architect Minsuk Cho has consistently engaged with a particular open-ended genre of architecture: the pavilion. While these pavilion commissions weren't purposely sought out, Mass Studies has explored them over twenty years and counting. The spectrum of iterations ranges from small to large, temporary to permanent, lightweight to massive, singular to multiple. Each project is driven by invention and/or discovery, transforming constraints into architectural motivators yielding encounters between humans and creating dialogues with the environment. These investigations reveal how tangible context in architecture can be explored in diverse ways—encompassing material selection and construction modes with awareness of their specific temporality. At the same time, each pavilion attempts to respond to evolving political and socio-cultural moments. The intangible context in architecture is rigorously interrogated across various moments in history, looking backward and forward simultaneously for performative qualities that create specific experiences. In this lecture, “Pavilion Effect” traces pavilion projects from Mass Studies and various collaborators chronologically, revealing how divergent approaches inform one another and the trajectory of practice itself, over time. The work is constantly confronted with oppositional notions—distant and close, utopian and real, everywhere and somewhere—with aspiration toward a generative cartography of architectural possibilities.