Archinect - JL Blog

As an future architect

2021-05-05T08:39:46-04:00

When I was young, I was just a normal kid who likes to build small tent using blankets and chairs and to play inside of that blanket tent with my brother. When I was in the tent, I could see my home and family through the small opening, and it gives me a totally different view from the outside of the tent. The tent also gave me warm and safe feeling, so I could fall asleep easily. I liked the experience that the tent was giving to me. I think this childhood memory influenced me to study architecture to make my dream true.

My dream is to build my own house by myself in beautiful nature and live with my family till I die. It could sound a little bit silly for most people, but this is the reason that I choose to study architecture. I did not like the most common housing style in Korea, which is high-rise apartments, so I came to Los Angeles to study different housing styles from my country. Although the first reason that I study architecture was only for my dream, architecture educatio...

Architecture with human sense

2021-05-05T01:50:05-04:00

In my last blog post, I talked about the directional concept of “Top and Bottom,” which does not apply if there is no gravity. Link: https://archinect.com/JLBlog/new-perspective-in-architecture-design. In other words, gravitational force gives the ability to sense or feel the direction to the people; for example, people can say which direction is up and down while closing their eyes. Without this sense of direction, the human brain does not function well. However, in the international space station, all the crew members live under micro-gravity, so they actually do not get any directional sense. This lack of directional sensecauses the reorientation illusion, which gives disorientation, confusion, and nausea to crew members.

The one architectural solution to help ISS crew members to get a directional sense is the layout of the interior lights. On Earth, natural light always comes down from the sky, and the human brain recognizes the light source, which is Sun in this case, as the to...

New Perspective in Architecture design

2021-03-10T14:44:40-05:00

On Earth, we have the concept of “Top” and “Bottom”. These directional concepts are defined by gravity. All buildings start from the ground and end up at the top of building because gravity pulls down all the objects on Earth. However, if we go out to space, there is no gravity, and it means that there is no “Top” or “Bottom.”

The building starts from “Top” to “Bottom”

figure 1. Analemma Tower by Clouds Architecture Office

A New York-based architecture firm “Clouds Architecture Office” proposed a new perspective about buildings. In their proposal, the foundation of the building starts from captured orbiting asteroid and comes down toward the Earth. In other words, the ground floor of this building will be the top of the building. In reality, this conceptual project is merely impossible to make real. For example, the asteroid needs some kind of propulsion engine to keep its orbital trajectory and the engine will need huge amount of energy to just keep the asteroid in its orbit. ...

Architecture in Space Exploration Age

2021-02-24T17:20:29-05:00

During the entire year of 2020, most people in the world have to stay in their home because of the pandemic. People had very limited outdoor activity and got used to have virtual meeting on online environment. A lot of people complained that how hard to keep staying at home for long time. However, this living style will be more popular when we start to move to the Moon and Mars. With the current rocketry technology, according to NASA, the journey to Mars will take about seven months with the best flight path. For example, NASA’s new Mars rover “Perseverance” launched on July 30, 2020 and landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. So, if we are considering sending a humankind to the Mars, people are staying in the spacecraft for about seven months or more than seven months because of the increased size of the spacecraft.

The MARS-500 Mission

Between 2007 and 2011, Russia, the European Space Agency and China conducted a psychosocial isolation experiment which named “the MARS-500,...