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Youngmin Kang’s 1.3 Collection Drew From a Scene at a Construction Site

02.25.20 | By
Youngmin Kang’s 1.3 Collection Drew From a Scene at a Construction Site

Seoul: it’s a patchy, multi-textured metropolis, burgeoning at its seams with street food sellers, neon lights touting cosmetics and fashion brands, and bars that serve makgeolli past midnight. In coming up with 1.3 Collection, Seoul-based designer Youngmin Kang looked to another derivative, common scene of everyday life in Seoul: the construction site.

Passing by a construction site, Kang observed a worker prop several pipes upright to use as a seat. Kang commented that the construction site was a “very inappropriate place to rest” yet these rough pipes offered temporary, sought-after rest for the worker.

Kang put these same industrial pipes together to form a chair that is bound together by straws and threads. The entire 1.3 Collection encompasses an entire range of furniture from stools, chairs, side tables to botanical objects such as vases. Kang used a colored poly rope for all the items so as to establish a consistent visual identity across the series.

Keshia grew up in Singapore and moved to the U.S. to attend Dartmouth College. When she was living abroad after graduation, a chance enrollment at the Architectural Association Visiting School led to her becoming enamored with door schedules and architectural écriture. She's particularly interested in design for aging, rural architecture, and Asian design heritage.