Reworld2023

The Reworld Pavilion is built from thousands of physical portals that transform the city into versions of Seoul 100 years from now. These physical renderings are co-imagined by the architects of the biennale, and an AI image generator that creates refracted mosaics using the physical city surrounding the installation. The pavilion remixes the city, creating new relationships between the built environment, various biomatter, the atmosphere and the ground.

The construction is a 10-meter curve populated by 2,160 diamond cut micro-prisms that each move precisely under the control of an electro-mechanical system crafted by the artists. These moving prisms become portals which reconfigure the physical surroundings. They are then networked with an AI that directs each prism to select relevant visual elements from the surrounding city that together form a mosaic image. A gold-plated infra-red shield on the South-facing façade safeguards the delicate mechanisms inside from the sun's potent heat during the daytime while protecting the electronic circuits from corrosive effects induced by rain.

The pavilion considers the role of an architecture biennale as a situation of image exchange, where future imaginations are handled and manipulated in the form of rendered images. These images shape the aspirations of the city's citizens and determine the relationship between the city's past and future. The Reworld Pavilion is an alternative technique for handling these images, offering up the physical city itself as a malleable material upon which we can form our imagination.