“The way we work together is like a ping-pong game,” says Sojung Lee, 36, about her partnership with Sangjoon Kwak, 35, in the Seoul-based OBBA (Office for Beyond Boundaries Architecture). “Instead of saying, ‘This is my work, and this is yours,’ one person will have an idea, then bounce it to the other. By doing that, we develop the idea and make it more concrete.” Unlike other architectural duos, where each partner brings his or her expertise to the union— the aesthete and the engineer, the designer and the businessman, the theorist and the realist—Lee and Kwak’s strength is in their cooperation.
The couple’s collaboration began at MASS Studies, a firm founded by Minsuk Cho in Seoul. (Cho’s former firm, Cho Slade Architecture of New York, was a Design Vanguard winner in 2000.) The two worked together on several MASS Studies projects and shared their frustration when those projects did not get built. In 2012, Lee was offered a commission while still working at MASS Studies. She asked Kwak, who had recently left the firm, to join her on the job, and OBBA was founded. The partners set up an office space in a soon-to-be-demolished building adjacent to the project site.
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