30th May/Korea Friday Late/Victoria and Albert Museum/London

This Friday Late brings Korea to South Kensington. Join us as Korean culture and technological innovation collide and cross-pollinate the galleries. From soap pottery to bojagi sewing, poetry to straw chairs, and K-pop to experimental gastronomy, this event explores the vibrant landscape of Korean contemporary art and design.

Visualisation of Taste

19.00, 19.30, 20.00, 20.30, 21.00

Using synaesthesia as a source of inspiration, designer Jinhuyn Jeon takes experimental gastronomy to another level. Her creation of STIMULI cutlery enriches the eating experience, teasing your senses through texture, colour and sound. This workshop will literally tickle your taste buds.

The poet Ko Un

19.30, 20.30 (30 minutes)

Korea’s foremost poet and national treasure, Ko Un, will be reading Poems I Left Behind from his collection of Seon poems (a form of Korean Buddhist writing). At the age of 81 Ko Un has been a forerunner for the Nobel Prize in Literature and continues to captivate audiences worldwide. His lyrical poems exquisitely portray the powerful language and philosophically rich culture of Korea. Sir Andrew Motion will be reading the poems in English.

Curated by Jiyoon Lee

All Evening

Made Of Chair

Robe yourself in a Hanbok and a pair of Gomusin (both provided!) and take a pew on Made Of Chair. Designer Kim Been’s armchair evokes the sensual pleasures of sitting in straw, born out of a romantic sensibility and a realisation of the potential of rice straw, a material otherwise destined for fodder. 

TableStitch

Textile Futures graduate Soojin Kang invites you to master the art of traditional jogakbo sewing. With a different take on your usual Friday dinner dining, pull up a chair, sit and stitch the communal cloth to create a beautiful fusion of East meeting West across the table.

Meekyoung Shin

Situated within the Korean Gallery, Meekyoung Shin displays her ornate vases carved from soap. Take inspiration from Shin’s work and join her in the Learning Studio to engrave your own moon jar cast in soap.

Junebum Park

Watch filmmaker and video artist Junebum Park take the role of puppeteer as he manipulates the everyday scenes of Korean life. A comical distortion of the urban environment and an exploration of contemporary ideas of space, illusion and control. 

Complex, Red

Red, represents loyalty, good fortune and wealth in Korea. Borim Jun and Seung Hwan Lee’s red beacon will mark the start of your journey through this Friday Late, symbolising the role of red in the broader sweep of Korean culture.

Sung Jang Laboratory

With the head of a bear and the body of a dinosaur, build your own creature using EQB (Emotion Quotient Blocks). Each EQB unit connects to another with Sung Jang’s unique ‘genderless’ snap joints.

Surface Matters

In a world of touchscreen tablets and toasters that send emails, the role of the surface is changing radically. Audio 01 designed by Eunhee Jo is a tangible textural interface. You can control its sound using a fabric interface and feel the surface respond beneath your fingers.

More info at:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/f/friday-late/

17th April-15th June/Lebbeus Woods Architect/Drawing Centre/New York

Acknowledging the parallels between society’s physical and psychological constructions, architect Lebbeus Woods has depicted a career-long narrative of how these constructions transform our being. Working mostly, but not exclusively, with pencil on paper, Woods has created an oeuvre of complex worlds—at times abstract and at times explicit—that present shifts, cycles, repetitions within the built environment. His timeless architecture is not in a particular style or in response to a singular moment in the field; rather, it offers an opportunity to consider how built forms impact the individual and the collective, and reflect contemporary political, social and ideological conditions, and how one person contributes to the development and mutation of the built world. Lebbeus Woods, Architect brings together works from the past forty years by one of the most influential designers working in architecture. Beyond architects, he has been hailed by designers, filmmakers, writers, and artists as a significant voice in recent history, his works resonate across many disciplines for their conceptual depth, imaginative breadth, lasting beauty and ethical potency. The exhibition centers on transformation as a recurring theme, providing a framework for understanding the experimental nature of the work.

This exhibition originated at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and will be on view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, November 22 through March 2, 2014.

Lebbeus Woods, Architect is curated by Joseph Becker, Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design, and Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, Helen Hilton Raiser Associate Curator of Architecture and Design, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Lebbeus Woods, Architect is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The exhibition at The Drawing Center is made possible by the generous support of Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown, Steven Holl + 32BNY, Edward Cella Art + Architecture, Friedman Benda, and Stéphane Samuel and Robert Melvin Rubin. Additional support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Wednesday 12-6pm
Thursday 12-8pm
Friday-Sunday 12-6pm
(closed on Monday & Tuesday)

More info at:
http://www.drawingcenter.org/en/drawingcenter/5/exhibitions/6/current/588/lebbeus-woods/

13 February 27 May/ Exhibitions The Brits Who Built the Modern World, 1950 – 2012/Riba/London

Launching the new architecture gallery, The Brits Who Built The Modern World, 1950-2012 tells the the fascinating global story of how British architecture underwent a transformation in the post-war years to become world-leading in the second half of the 20th century.

From Beijing to New York, airports to museums, Foster to Rogers, this era of vast change saw a generation of British architects redefining the world’s cities and creating extraordinary buildings that put British architecture back on the world map. The exhibition charts what was created and where, revealing the buildings, their designers, influences and the style they inspired. It explores the reasons behind this global success story through over 190 photographs, drawings, models and other material, taken from RIBA's incredible collections and key architectural practices.

The exhibition is part of a RIBA season of exhibitions and events inspired by the BBC series The Brits Who Built The Modern World.

RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London 

Free entry

13 February - 27 May 2014

More info:

http://www.architecture.com/WhatsOn/RIBAPublicProgramme/brits-who-built-the-modern-world/ExhibitionsandEvents/season.aspx#.UyhYnRZYkyE