Sun-Young Rieh

One of the central points of Rieh’s teaching, research, and practice has been her design theories of place attachment, as put forth in her book Creating a Sense of Place in School Environments: How Young Children Construct Place Attachment. Through the work integrating built and landscape environments with behavioral psychology, she unpacks how the architectural and landscape design of schools is inextricably linked to the formation of place in children, acknowledging that schools are one of the least investigated places in society in terms of place attachment and developmental psychology.[4] She articulates the importance of place for cognitive development, and suggests design elements that should be considered:

…Children’s place attachment is a precondition for cognitive development.  The environment in which children’s lives are organized influences the personal schema that enables them to respond to the world. Such childhood memory imprints not only affect life quality, but also frame identity and enduring traits of adult world view. The childhood school environment therefore needs special attention with respect to sense of place…If architects want to create schools that help child development and heighten quality of life in the form of assisting the formation of lasting cherished childhood memories, they need to pay special attention to aesthetically satisfactory design…[including elements of design at areas representing] boundaries, centers, and paths…[as well as] functional diversity, privacy, thermal comfort, articulated outdoor space and children’s participation in the design and/ or construction of the school setting.[4]

Rieh has sought to put into practice these considerations of place-shaping school design through her work with the Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI) in brainstorming and crafting a new prototype school. The process invited users to participate in the design phase through a series of workshops involving both teachers and students, representing the first time in Korea that users have been consulted on issues relating to school design.[5]  Design charettes involved participants compiling a collective wish list, proposing designs for a given space, and giving feedback to architectural concept drawings.  The result was an encouraging collaboration among students, as well as between students and staff, to imagine a variety of gathering spaces that could nurture a school's unique community culture.[5]

At the core of such a collaborative design process is the hope that schools can serve as community nodes for neighbourhoods.  For Rieh, schools have the potential to serve as special places cultivating social infrastructure—whether as a multigenerational meeting place, a space for community gardening, or a shelter in emergency times.[6] In providing a place of connection that meets the public’s changing needs, schools have an opportunity (in addition to the standard purpose of cultivating youth) to work for all of society’s benefit.[6]

Rieh’s work with schools has focused on good design not only in terms of place attachment but also in terms of sustainability.  She affirms that, in the design of schools, the integration of eco-friendliness with environmental can benefit children’s emotional development.[7] Her research, coupled with her architectural-practice background have, for instance, led to specific suggestions for sustainably renovating the standard school plan of 1980s Korea: increasing natural lighting, increasing ventilation, improving thermal performance, etc.[8]

Sustainable architecture and environmental design have comprised a critical part of Rieh's research in general.  She considers it vital to employ simulation tools to analyze energy usage, reducing energy consumption for lighting, ventilation, and heating and cooling loads throughout the life of a building, thus minimizing waste and recycle. Yet, for Rieh, such tools and any kind of performance-focused certification are not enough: they must be partnered with qualitative research based on environmental psychology.[7] These perspectives are exemplified in her Korean-language book Boom or Bust?: The future of Teheran-ro after the Gangnam Building Boom that discusses the Teheran-ro blocks of Seoul’s Gangnam area, analyzing aspects of urban planning related to sustainability in the realm of energy regulations.[9]

All this is part of a pursuit of architecture that synthesizes eco-friendly and human-friendly design.  This is an architecture for social benefit, and, according to Rieh, architects who create eco-friendly and human-friendly environments will find “everything to be precious.”[2]