Mijung Kim

Mijung Kim is a second-year MA Architecture student working as a partner architect at UnSangDong Architects in South Korea. Since 2010, from international competition projects to a small pavilion, her practice seeks "architecture that realises concepts" through projects of various sizes. Her architectural and exhibition projects share the same seed of spatial concept. She firstly investigates the concept, a lump of thought, through a medium that can achieve a degree of freedom that is not limited to the grammar of traditional architecture. Her installations, drawings, and videos in exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale, Amado Gallery, and Soma Art Museum, maximise spatial imagination and perspectives. Her conceptual experiment in the gallery stands at a new starting point as an architectural potential. It is realised in architectural projects, including the Louis Vuitton Flagship store in Seoul, Guggenheim Museum International Design, Chronotope Wall house, Lee Sang-bong Tower, etc. She intends to explore "architectural concepts" that are not bound by form and scale. With enthusiasm to expand her practice to architecture expressed between art and society, in 2019, she started a new journey at the Royal College of Art and explored the possibility of architectural research to make her own narrative in an architectural and spatial argument. At the beginning of that new exploration, she is currently working with YouTube video content to capture various social phenomena through Visionary Architecture and draw a series of works of architecture, city and space of the future with the architect's imagination.

Her first-year project with ADS9 investigated 'Openness for women who look for a new form of life after giving birth: One-month temporary house for postpartum care. Her project suggests space of transition liberates them from the idealised image of a mother and enables them to find sustainability between their life and motherhood in a collective environment against society's assumption that motherhood imposes women on labour of affective care.

This year she seeks a narrative of Penicillin, the first antibiotic drug, through circular compartments containing the substance. She illustrates how it is leaked and spilt and makes its way through our environment and the human body. Her project brings a new perception of antibiotics as the metabolism of microorganisms, not a pharmaceutical product, and suggests an alternative living for a symbiotic relationship with their biosphere.

Every 1000 people consume 30 tablets of antibiotics every day and this habitual dosage began with the discovery of penicillin, the first modern antibiotic medicine. It took 20 years for the biological discovery for it to become an industrial product. After the U.S. entered World War II, the government spurred 20 pharmaceutical companies to produce Penicillin to reduce soldier casualties.

Penicillin is a substance from a type of blue fungi, penicillium. As it is extracted from a living organism, the medicine can be manufactured by growing fungi within controlled temperature, moisture, acidity and nutrition; its amount scales up gradually by cultivating in different tanks. It is the beginning of anthropogenic activity, manipulating a population of a particular living microbe and interrupting the biosphere of microorganisms. We believe this drug is contained within certain boundaries and managed for the intended application; the cross-sections of Penicillin’s metabolic pathway show the rupture of each compartment we use in mass production, application and after use of the substance. Leakage and spills from the rupture result in unexpected pathways of Penicillin, and water becomes an agent to move the medicine throughout the environment and the human body. The social and political perspective of antibiotics based on post-industrial metabolism denies the presence of microbes in the compartments. But rupture, leak and spills in the pathways questions how the boundary, as intervened surface, regulates the penetration of medicine. Antibiotics is not a product that we can regulate in certain boundary, but a metabolism of micro organism that we share with the entire biosphere.

The project is transforming industrial container to commensal habitat with different species remediating diversity of the organisms. Abandoned salmon farm in Loch Dutch, due to significant contamination of pharmaceutical residue, is an evidence of the industrial perspective toward living organisms.

It manipulates the livestock population by pharmaceutical application, overlooking impacts on microorganisms. The deep basins of the site are filled with soft mud with little water movement, which is an amazing habitat for marine animals but difficult to be purified by natural tidal current. The project uses projection of old salmon cages and transforms them into a park as commensal living spaces for humans and other species. It remediates the habitat for local marine animals, vegetation and microorganisms and brings the perception of space for commensal living with microbes.

Rupture, leak and spills from metabolic pathway of penicillin, media item 1

1st conjunction water of antibiotic pathway in the manufacturing stage. Most pharmaceutical companies manufacture their products in China and India for cheaper costs, the city without a modern infrastructure is abused by pharmaceutical pollution. The factories illegally release wastewater into local underground water. Slum village without a water supply system still gains domestic water from artificial wells that show high contamination of antibiotics.

2nd conjunction water of antibiotic pathway in farming animals. It is estimated that 73% of all antibiotics are used in farm animals, not human intake. Much of this use is routine, not only for sick symptoms but for farm animals to be kept in poor conditions where the disease spreads easily. Marine culture poses a more severe problem because of the open farming condition to the ocean. The cages are made of the net, floating ocean and anchored in the sea bed. The structure with high porosity of the net cage results in direct leakage of medicines to the ecosystem. So, the rupture of the farming industry is another junction of an unexpected pathway of antibiotics.

The 3rd conjunction water of antibiotic pathway in metropolitan city. Rivers in the major city show high contamination even if we believe the river water is controlled by a modern sewage system. The substance, once entered our society, finds their way into rivers and our body. Our body works in a symbiosis system engaging with bacteria and fungi, only 10-30% of the total number of the gene we have is from the cell of our body, and the rest of them are from the microorganisms. The section of the gut is the place the commensal microorganism lives and sustains our life. But Penicillin isn't subject to specific bacteria that cause infection, and it impacts entire microorganisms in our body. So the action of antibiotics ruptures the commensal system of our body with other species.

The site is a salmon farm in Loch Duich, in south Scotland. Loch Duich is specified as a Marine protected area due to significant contamination of sediments with pharmaceutical residues. So the fish farming facilities will be relocated, and the existing cage and contaminated area would be abandoned.

I suggest a mixed program of nature and bio-art. Bioart is a practice where humans work with living organisms and their life processes. The creative process with other organisms replaces space where only livestock, salmon, was raised. There are five exhibition spaces and four floating gardens for marine vegetation. And the rest of the salmon cage is preserved, and the old net's porous structure becomes a field for seaweed growing. And small huts for farming workers change into residency housing and community for bio artists and inspire them to create content for exhibition space.

Starting from the seashore, a linear bridge brings people to get inside submarine space and observe the benthic community of the site. Cylinder space with different depths gives an experience of different ocean levels from the surface of the water to the bottom of the sea, and visual opacity differs from the levels of each cylinder space.

Explode Diagram – It consists of two different layers, one underwater passage with exhibition space and another floating pathway with a marine vegetation garden. The right side suggests deeper space in milky and opaque vision, captures benthic geography of burrowed mud and witness remediation of its community. After experiencing bio-art installation, the underwater pathway continues on the surface level for hydro activity with a floating garden.

A sequential journey of experiencing different material of antibiotics' metabolic pathways engaging with water. The movement of water and the sunlight blur the rigid outline of the industrial material, metal, bricks, and synthetic fibres, which construct boundaries.

Floating plaza is surrounded by six cages on the left side. It moves to two different levels, surface and 4m down, responding to different spatial demands. When it floats on the surface of the water, it connects to floating pathways and makes a large floating plaza. In case it meets with the outdoor program of cage space 4m down, its topography provides a marine pool for hydro activities.

The platform moves up and down by controlling the amount of water in the tank underneath. The plane plaza has chambers to control how deep it is located and gives different levels of engagement with the sea. Its basic structural principle to every cage space and pathway.

In order to reduce the impact of sea bad, the entire space is floated using a layer of the pontoon. Air and water chamber underneath help to adjust the vertical level. A mooring system controls horizontal movement.

Outer material is made of soil employing fungal mycelium, which is the same family as penicillium. The biomaterial is not for division and exclusion but a space in the scale of microorganisms with porous structure interacting with the metabolism of fungi and bacteria.

“Bio” is from Greek meaning “life”. Our position in using “Antibiotic” has premises that we are against and instrumentalise another organism. Rehabilitating farming facilities finds how we achieve symbiotic relationships with other organisms.

Benthic environment with burrowed mud gives milky and dark vision. As trails continue moving 8m up, more sunlight and reflection is engaged and gives a bright and light texture of material. And the trail becomes a circulation of exhibition in meeting with three cylinder spaces. And this journey ends with an outdoor floating plaza. Regulated circulation trails in deep sea changes to open space. It is a commensal living platform with seaweed, animals, micro organisms.

Mijung Kim

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Royal College of Art