In May 2025, the work of pioneering Korean landscape architect Jung Youngsun (b. 1941) will be presented in Venice. Titled For All That Breathes on Earth: Jung Youngsun and Collaborators, the exhibition will run from May 9 to July 13 as the inaugural show of the newly opened San Marco Art Center (SMAC), housed in the renovated 16th-century Procuratie building in St. Mark’s Square. This traveling version of the exhibition, originally shown at MMCA Seoul where it drew over 280,000 visitors, marks the 2024–2025 Year of Korea-Italy Cultural Exchange.
The San Marco Art Center, redesigned by 2023 Pritzker Prize laureate David Chipperfield, serves as Venice’s new hub for visual culture. Chipperfield also contributes to this exhibition as a formal collaborator, fostering a dynamic dialogue between architectural space and curatorial content.
Jung has long approached landscape not as a directive practice but as a language of dialogue. Grounded in the contemporary values of resilience and sustainability, his work is defined by a consistent pursuit of landscape aesthetics that respect ecological and cultural specificity. This Venice exhibition serves as a comprehensive introduction to Jung’s six-decade career and marks the first major European presentation of Korean landscape design’s formal and philosophical depth.
The exhibition is organized around seven thematic sections, each inspired by the traditional Korean Ru (樓)—an open wooden pavilion designed to frame views. As visitors move from section to section, they trace the landscape architect’s gaze and contemplations, much like ascending a pavilion to observe the world beyond. The show features more than 300 archival items including drawings, sketches, models, photographs, and videos, with works by photographers Kim Yongkwan, Yang Haenam, Shin Kyungsub, and Jung Ji-hyun, as well as immersive visual contributions by studio Giraffe pictures (Jung Dawoon and Kim Jongsin).
Each section reinterprets key principles that Jung has consistently explored: coexistence with nature, place-based design, and spaces that embrace the rhythms of life. These are presented as layered narratives across time and place.
The exhibition also includes interactive educational programs that embody Jung’s design philosophy. Gardening Time, Living Names, and Time of the Mind, Time of Nature invite visitors to draw their own inner gardens, learn about native plants, and reflect on ecological imagination through meditative and sensory engagement.
Kim Sung-hee, Director of MMCA Korea, noted, “This exhibition is a collaboration with Jung’s long-time creative partners, presenting the philosophy and visual language of Korean landscape architecture to a global audience. We hope visitors will observe the tensions and harmonies between Venice’s architectural history and Jung’s ecological sensibility.”
Coinciding with the opening of the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, the exhibition acts as a layered platform that communicates Korean landscape philosophy to an international public. It explores how reading the land, preserving memory, and contextualizing life can be extended into aesthetic language. This moment in Venice marks a critical point of convergence between Korean ‘landscape imagination’ and the evolving discourse on global public space. Courtesy of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art / Photo by Kim Yongkwan
Exhibition Themes
1. A Shift in Paradigm: Writing a Sustainable History
This section highlights landscape projects that recover historical memory and site-specific identity. The redevelopment of Gwanghwamun Square (2009) articulates the aesthetics of emptiness while reinterpreting symbolic narratives in a contemporary urban context. The Gyeongchun Line Forest Trail (2015–2017) transforms remnants of a colonial-era railway into a forward-looking public space, exemplifying how landscape can reframe the past into a place of collective future.
2. Globalization and the Urban Landscape of Korea
Large-scale national projects like the Daejeon Expo (1993), Asian Games Athletes’ Village (1986), and Olympic Apartment Complex (1988) contributed to shaping Korea’s modern urban identity for an international audience. At the same time, these projects introduced green infrastructure into dense cities, demonstrating how landscape connects ecological systems with civic ambition.
3. Nature, Art, and the Leisure Imagination
Spaces such as the Seoul Arts Center (1988), Phoenix Park (1995), and the upcoming humanities residency Dunaewon (expected 2026) merge art, leisure, and topographic context. Inspired by Heidegger’s Holzwege (Forest Paths), Dunaewon presents landscape not as layout but as a journey of thought—where terrain becomes philosophy.
4. Plants: The Soil of Life
Projects like Asan Medical Center Garden (2007) and Won Dharma Center (2011) reveal the emotional and therapeutic dimension of landscape design. At the Won Dharma Center in upstate New York, native vegetation and expansive grounds converge to form a meditative continuum between architecture and nature.
5. River Landscapes and Ecological Recovery
This section showcases the role of landscape in restoring urban ecosystems. Seonyudo Park (2001) and Yeouido Saetgang Ecological Park (1997, 2008) repurpose former infrastructural sites into living ecological corridors—turning the concrete city into a space where time and life flow again.
6. The Reimagining of Korean Gardens
Projects like Heewon (1997), Byeolseo Garden in Pohang (2008), and Haedong Gyeonggi Garden (2005) reinterpret the traditional aesthetics of Korean gardens. Through site-sensitive planting and the principle of borrowed scenery (chagyeong), they revive the native grammar of landscape as gradual visual unfolding and spatial introspection.
7. Dialogue Between Architecture and Landscape
In projects such as Osulloc Tea Museum (2012, 2019, 2023), Moheon (2011), and Southcape Namhae (2013), landscape design becomes the leading voice—not a supporting element to architecture. Collaborations with architects like Cho Minsuk (Mass Studies), Cho Byoungsoo (BCHO Architects), and Seung H-Sang (IROJE) blur disciplinary boundaries, proposing a new sensory language and spatial rhythm.
