[News Culture] Korean modernist architect Kim Chung-up’s encounter with Le Corbusier in the early 1950s became a formative chapter in his career. More than seven decades later, the connection between the two architects is being revisited through photographs taken in Korea and India.
“A Conversation: Kim Chung-up—Le Corbusier” opens Nov. 8 at First Coffee Lab Haenggung in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, and runs through March 8, 2027. First presented as an official exhibition commemorating 140 years of diplomatic relations between Korea and France, the architectural photography show returns in an encore edition offering wider public access.
The exhibition pairs photographs of Kim’s architecture by Korean architectural photographer Kim Yong-kwan with French photographer Manuel Bougot’s long-term documentation of Le Corbusier’s work in India.
An Encounter That Shaped Kim Chung-up’s Architecture
Kim Chung-up met Le Corbusier at a UNESCO-organized international artists’ conference in Venice in September 1952. Later that year, he joined the French architect’s Paris atelier, where he worked until 1955.
After returning to Korea, Kim developed an architectural language that brought lessons from Western modernism into contact with Korean traditions of form and space.
The French Embassy in Korea, completed in 1962, remains one of the clearest examples. Its modern structural system is combined with rooflines and spatial arrangements that draw on Korean architectural traditions.
The previous edition of “A Conversation” used the French Embassy and Yeonhui Jeongeum, a 1986 residence from the later years of Kim’s career, as settings for the exhibition. Public access to the embassy portion, however, was limited because visits were available only by special invitation.
Kim Yong-kwan Photographs Architecture as It Exists Today
The Suwon exhibition presents Kim Chung-up’s work through photographs by Kim Yong-kwan.
His subjects include the Jinhae Naval Residence, the French Embassy in Korea, the Humanities Building at Pusan National University and the Gyeongnam Culture and Arts Center. Rather than concentrating only on their original architectural form, the photographs also register materials, structural details and the changes the buildings have accumulated over time.
The Jinhae Naval Residence offers a particularly rare example. Completed in 1968, the building has remained largely inaccessible because it is located within a military facility. Kim’s photographs, first presented in the earlier exhibition, provided an opportunity to see the current state of a work that has been relatively difficult to encounter within the architect’s broader body of work.
That approach makes the photographs more than straightforward records of individual buildings. They also document what has happened to Kim Chung-up’s architecture after decades of use, alteration and aging.
Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh Through Manuel Bougot’s Camera
Le Corbusier’s side of the exhibition is represented by French photographer Manuel Bougot, who has been photographing the architect’s work in India since 2009.
A major focus is Chandigarh, including the Capitol Complex and its Palace of Assembly, High Court and Secretariat. Bougot records not only their monumental forms but also the concrete surfaces, light and shadow that shape the experience of moving through the buildings.
Chandigarh is particularly relevant to Kim Chung-up’s story. During his years at Le Corbusier’s atelier, Kim participated in drawing work connected with the city’s architectural project.
That link gives the exhibition its central structure. Kim Yong-kwan follows the buildings Kim Chung-up left in Korea, while Bougot has spent years documenting Le Corbusier’s architecture in India. Seen together, the two photographic bodies of work allow the architects’ relationship to emerge through the buildings themselves rather than through biography alone.
The Conversation Moves to Suwon
The encore exhibition also changes the setting in which the photographs are seen.
After presentations connected with the French Embassy and Yeonhui Jeongeum in Seoul, “A Conversation” moves to Haenggung-dong in Suwon, near Suwon Hwaseong Fortress and Hwaseong Haenggung Palace.
The first and second floors of First Coffee Lab Haenggung will be used as exhibition spaces, allowing café visitors as well as those coming specifically for the show to encounter the photographs.
The move places photographs of 20th-century modern architecture within a district strongly associated with an earlier layer of Korean architectural history. It also opens the exhibition to a broader audience after the restricted access of part of its previous presentation.
“A Conversation: Kim Chung-up—Le Corbusier” runs from Nov. 8 through March 8, 2027, at First Coffee Lab Haenggung in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province.
Reported by News Culture M.J._mj94070777@nc.press
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