C3 443: Where Time Layers in Korean Industrial Heritage

This issue explores two interrelated trajectories in contemporary architecture: the renewed relevance of timber, one of humanity’s oldest building materials, and the transformation of obsolete industrial structures into new cultural territories. Through material innovation and the "overwriting" of time, it examines how architecture bridges the memory of place with future-facing value. It presents three projects that demonstrate the expanded potential of timber architecture today: the Ajung Lake Public Library in Jeonju, which translates the lakeside landscape into a rhythmic timber structure; the Historical Oberamteistrasse Museum in Germany, where the memory of a medieval city is refracted through a translucent glass envelope; and Limberlost Place in Toronto, which pushes the technical boundaries of tall timber construction. Furthermore, three Korean responses to the "existing" (pre-existence) within industrial sites. From 111CM in Suwon, which overlays a modern timber structure onto an old factory frame, and Be-Fore, which leaves a wastewater facility’s raw scars intact, to the Donghae Quarry Remodeling, which reconfigures massive materiality into new spatial tension—these projects explore the poetics of the palimpsest, where the present is delicately written over the traces of the past. The issue also features the Office Building Arquipeo in São Paulo, mediating between contrasting orders, and the Charleroi Exhibition Center in Belgium, redefined through a strategy of subtraction and void. Together, these works reflect a profound contemporary commitment to the essence of place.