est. 2018 — Seoul · Kyoto

건설 STUDIO

An architectural studio working in the spaces between drawing and dwelling, structure and silence.

Statement · 01

Construction as quiet architecture.

We design buildings the way one composes a room of tea — by what is removed, not what is added. Each project begins with a single line, drawn carefully, and ends with the same line, redrawn in concrete and timber. Between those two gestures lies the year, or the decade, of patient making.

Our practice works at the intersection of Japanese minimal sensibility and Bauhaus structural clarity. We are interested in joints, in proportions, in the way light falls across a beam at four o'clock in autumn.

Selected Work · 2019 — 2026

A gallery of constructed silences.

Residence · Kyoto · 2024

House of Two Courtyards

A timber-and-stone residence organized around the breath between two open spaces. The roof is a single uninterrupted plane that rests, rather than presses, upon its columns.

Wood · Stone · Washi screen

Pavilion · Seoul Bukchon · 2023

Cantilever Reading Room

A small reading pavilion that extends six meters past its supports. The cantilever is calculated, but the experience is one of weightlessness — a shelf for books and the slow watching of trees.

Steel · Hinoki · Hand-finished concrete

Chapel · Jeju Island · 2022

Chapel of the Long Light

A roofed enclosure on the southern coast, oriented to the angle of the winter solstice. Sunlight enters through a single horizontal slit and travels, over the year, across a polished basalt floor.

Basalt · Black steel · Linen

Workshop · Gangwon · 2021

Joinery Workshop No. 7

A working studio for a master carpenter. Designed without nails — the entire structure is held together by traditional Korean dovetail joints, exposed and visible from every working position inside.

Pine · Cedar · Iron pegs

Practice · The four movements

A method drawn slowly.

  1. Movement 01 · Listening

    Site, season, silence.

    We walk the site through every season before drafting a single line. We measure not only its dimensions but its weather, its light, and the distance to the nearest stone.

  2. Movement 02 · Drawing

    Hairline studies.

    Hand-drawn cross-sections at 1:50, in graphite on cotton paper. We refine through erasure as much as addition, until the drawing is as quiet as the building it imagines.

  3. Movement 03 · Modeling

    Cardboard, basswood, light.

    Physical models at three scales — 1:200, 1:50, 1:20 — each tested against a single oblique lamp that imitates the seasonal sun. The model is correct when shadow and structure agree.

  4. Movement 04 · Constructing

    With the makers.

    We are present at the site each week of construction, with the carpenters and masons. Every joint is reviewed in the wood and stone — not on the page — because the drawing only ends when the building begins.

Materials · A working palette

Earth, fired and quiet.

01 · Concrete

Hand-troweled, with aggregate from the Han river. Cured slowly under cotton sheets.

02 · Hinoki

Japanese cypress, brushed with rice straw to raise the grain. Untreated, allowed to silver.

03 · Basalt

Volcanic stone from Jeju, split by hand, each face left as the hammer found it.

04 · Terracotta

Fired clay tile in a single low-temperature kiln. Used for the courtyard floors.

Dialogue · An excerpt

"Building is the slow making of stillness. The more carefully we draw the structure, the more silently it stands. Our drawings, in the end, are instructions for a kind of quiet."

— from a 2025 conversation with Kim Min-Joon, principal

Correspondence

Letters welcome — slowly.

We accept new commissions on a small, careful schedule. Initial conversations are by written letter, which we read on Friday afternoons.

Studio
Bukchon-ro 11-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul
Atelier
Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto
Letters
studio@gunsul.studio
Hours
Tuesday — Friday · by appointment