Date of Award
Spring 5-31-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Design (MDes) in Interior Studies / Exhibition + Narrative Environments
Department
Interior Architecture
First Advisor
Jeffrey Katz
Second Advisor
Eduardo Benamor Duarte
Third Advisor
Can Altay
Abstract
In contemporary Korean society, where uniform ideals and social pressure often dominate, individuality—especially emotional individuality—can be difficult to maintain. This loss of personal agency has real consequences: mental and physical health challenges, including eating disorders, are on the rise.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 3 percent of the global population is affected by such disorders—roughly 1.55 million people in South Korea—despite the country having the lowest obesity rate among OECD nations. The increase, particularly among women in their teens to thirties, reflects the emotional toll of conforming to rigid societal standards.
Architecture is not merely a backdrop for social narratives, but an active medium that can convey unspoken emotional realities. The study begins with a question: Can space communicate that you're not wrong, just different—not through words, but through space?
Situated in Seoul’s Gangnam district, the K Museum of Contemporary Art (KMCA) lies at the epicenter of this pressure—an area where intense academic competition and fast-cycling trends expose adolescents and young adults (ages 10–30) to relentless norms of perfection.
While most traditional museums rely on didactic, text-based displays, this thesis challenges that model by designing a physical participatory environment—one in which space becomes a tool for conveying the invisible social narrative at the KMCA and beyond. Informed by Donald Norman’s emotional design theory, the project reimagines the visceral–behavioral–reflective model through three phases:
A. Break - out of the standard thinking and investigate the visceral psychosomatic symptoms triggered by Korea’s societal uniformity pressure.
B. Weave - a behavior-based exhibition flow that speaks an empathetic spatial language, which is a story sequence with personal turning points.
C. Release - the reflective stage at the KMCA, where the exhibition functions as a spatial artwork through which contemporary issues surface and are emotionally processed.
By withholding fixed meaning, this approach opens room for self-understanding and emotional ownership. The exhibition journey becomes a quiet canvas for personal reinterpretation—an invitation to reclaim what has long been suppressed. In doing so, this thesis affirms both the dignity of personal thought differences and the empathetic potential of architecture.
Recommended Citation
Shin, Jaeyeon, "From In to Out" (2025). Masters Theses. 1392.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1392
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