The extraction of the cultural identity of Korea, and its contextualization into architecture in New Zealand

Abstract

RESEARCH QUESTION: How can the Korean community express its cultural identity through architecture in New Zealand?

There no longer exists a definitive boundary of vernacularism and a once identifiable characteristics of a certain culture are blurred and modified. Modernism has taken its effect to a superlative level, and in a timeframe of less than a century, the urban fabric of Korea has transformed from a relatively sequestered, but well preserved form of vernacular to an early modernistic [?] ideal envisions. This is however only a proportion of modernist [?] impact on post-war Korea, as it has not only influence what is visible to the eye, but also that which cannot be perceived visually. The fundamentals and assets that determine how and what an identity of Korea is have been almost entirely altered into an uneasy mixture of western repercussion and traditional values. And although this conflict is not specific to Korea, the impingement of this penetration has effectively manipulated everything to a great extent than that of the neighbouring countries such as China and Japan. This phenomenon is even further perplexed by the surge of globalism and human migration into different countries - and this has especially been the case of developed countries.

This research project is set out to penetrate through every layer of this hybrid amalgamation which has been overlapped with diverse components during the last century. Extracting components that are entangled within these layers is essential in this process, and is in an attempt to unveil and reimagine cultural identity and reassemble its apparent hierarchy. Having this in context, this research project later brings this derived information and focuses on the Korean community in New Zealand that attempts to its cultural identity through architecture as an immigrant community. Therefore the question of what the identity of Korea is goes one step further and investigates what this means to be in a multicultural context and how the formulated architecture will interact - or counteract - with the existing local culture.