Leading contemporary architect Kimm Jong-soung‘s archival book published by MMCA

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea has published an archival book on Korea’s renowned architect Kimm Jong-soung based on archives of the architect’s career that Kimm donated to the museum in 2014.

The 86-year-old Kimm is a leading contemporary architect based in Seoul who has designed a diverse portfolio of buildings in South Korea, including the Weightlifting Gymnasium for the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Sonje Museum of Contemporary Art, Ajou University Hospital, SK Corporation headquarters building and the Millennium Hilton Seoul, which was then the Seoul Hilton Hotel. He studied at the Illinois Institute of Technology and worked at the studio of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe -- a world renowned German-American architect (1886-1969) -- for more than 10 years throughout 1972.

He donated some 27,000 archives to the museum in 2014, which became the cornerstone of the archival book in Korean titled “Kimm Jong-soung Collection.” Archivists at the museum have gone through research and arrangement of the archives over the past seven years, according to the museum. 

The collection book includes interviews with the architect and his design process for monumental buildings such as the Millennium Hilton Seoul. Located in Jung-gu, central Seoul, the hotel was founded in 1983 and has became one of the city’s monumental works of contemporary architecture.

Kimm’s architectural accomplishments were recognized at the national museum’s retrospective “Harmony Between Technology and Art_Architect Jong Soung Kimm” exhibit in 2014. The exhibition showed some 200 archives of Kimm and explore how the pioneering architect paved the ways for Korean contemporary architecture. He received the Order of Culture Merit (Bogwan) from the Korean government in the same year.

The book is available to the public at the digital library and digital archive at MMCA Seoul and MMCA Gwacheon’s art research center. The digital library and digital archive at MMCA Seoul requires online reservation and operates from Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., providing a wide range of art information.

By Park Yuna (yunapark@heraldcorp.com)