Dissolving Arch
The project, ‘Dissolving Arch’ is a weather-specific installation located in Jeju Island. The island has a long rainy and humid period in summer. The structure is designed to react on rain and humidity, exploring constituent of masonry and reflecting time of weather changes. At the beginning the structure stands as a solid brick vault. Yet it is slowly dissolved in the hot and rainy periods of Jeju to produce a light, porous skeleton made of the remaining mortar connecting people with nature.
The project starts with the curiosity about constituent of brick and its structure. Instead of clay bricks, the arch is piled up with rock salt units, measured 200 x 100 x 50 millimeters, with cement mortar. Two distinctive materiality of the brick; light permeable and soluble, creates an interesting relationship among the status changes. Although blocked off from the outside, the space is brightened by light filtering through the salt brick. In the dissolving process people start experiencing nature outside through porosity of the structure. As it begins to allow more light-in and provides a better connection with nature at the same time. The final state of the arch is one which allows light to penetrate in and blurs the barrier between inside and outside. It is about a narrative that an isolated and solid object transforms to an open and framed structure creating another dialogue of people and nature.
Unlike ordinary clay bricks absorb the moisture of the mortar and quickly have friction on the surface, the salt bricks do not. The arch is completed after creating scores on the salt brick surface to ensure its adhesion to the mortar creating frictional surface, and reinforcing with the steel wires in mortar. In the characteristic of temporary, the structure minimizes harm on the ground. Concrete base is used as a point foundation and drainage below grade is embedded into steel frame base to protect lawn around.
