Jungmin Nam

Purpose: In the low-rise residential areas of Seoul, public spaces between buildings and streets are often designed without considering pedestrian interactions, resulting in disconnected and uninviting environments. Prior research highlights diversity and layering as key to creating pedestrian-friendly urban spaces. This study aims to identify the challenges of interface spaces in these areas and propose improvements through comparison with similar spaces in Tokyo, a city with comparable urban c

Purpose: This study examines the physical characteristics of school boundaries and proposes strategies for their reconfiguration as communicative urban interfaces. Although there is a growing demand for schools to serve as community hubs, prevailing defensive architectural approaches perpetuate spatial disconnection and further isolate educational institutions from the surrounding urban context. Method: Twenty-three schools in Seoul’s Yeongdong 2 District were analyzed within a grid context to c

Purpose: This study addresses the issue of urban disconnection arising from the rigid dichotomy between public streets and private lots in modern Seoul. Focusing on the concept of “interface space” as a mediator, the research investigates architectural strategies to vitalize the street-level environment. The study specifically interrogates two morphological qualities essential for urban porosity: diversity, operationalized as fine-grained horizontal segmentation, and layering, defined as the spa

Purpose: Previous studies on low-rise residential areas often focused on fragmented individual plots, failing to capture the continuous street experience. To overcome this limitation, this study shifts the analytical focus to the ‘continuous street’ context, comparing ground-floor interface spaces in Yangjae-dong, Seoul and Shimouma, Tokyo to identify how frontage depth variations construct different boundary characteristics. Method: Analyzing 24 (Seoul), 31 (Tokyo) buildings on comparable 180m

Purpose: In Seoul, low-rise areas have been developed haphazardly on individual plots, lacking proper design guidelines and research that would foster a more enjoyable street environment. The building facades and their components play a crucial role in this context. By analyzing the facades and their components in low-rise residential neighborhoods, this study seeks to identify important features of design elements and compositions that can improve the facades of the low-rise residential area bu