UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Dongsei Kim, an award-winning architect, urbanist and educator, will kick off the Stuckeman School’s 2019-20 Lecture and Exhibit Series on Sept. 25 with a talk on mapping and design projects that use the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) as a proving ground to rethink the commonly exclusionary nation-state border spaces as inclusionary spaces. The lecture, hosted by the Penn State Department of Architecture, will begin at 6 p.m. in the Stuckeman Family Building Jury Space at University Park.
Based in New York, Kim is an assistant professor in the School of Architecture and Design at the New York Institute of Technology and the founder of axu studio. Both his research and practice examine architecture and urbanism’s relationship to nation-state borders across multiple scales.
Kim’s research on the Korean DMZ has been recognized through notable international publications and exhibitions such as the Golden Lion Award-winning “Crow’s Eye View” exhibition at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale; “Real DMZ Project” in Seoul, South Korea; “Over the Boundary” in Brisbane, Australia; and “(im)positions” at the Melbourne School of Design in Melbourne, Australia.
He was named the Sherman Family Emerging Scholar by the Korea Society in New York City in 2018 and was awarded the Gapado Artist in Residency in 2019.
Kim’s writings have been published in journals such as Toops, Volume, Inflection, Landscape Architecture Frontiers, Kerb and The Site Magazine, and in books such as "The North Korean Atlas," "Critical Landscapes," "Crow’s Eye View: The Korean Peninsula" and "Chandigarh Rethink." His work also has been cited in such publications as Domus, The New York Times and Dwell Magazine.
Kim holds a master of design studies with distinction from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, a master of science in architecture and urban design from Columbia University, and a professional bachelor of architecture from Victoria University of Wellington.
Stuckeman School Lectures and Exhibits are free and open to all.