As Times Goes By

As Times Goes By

An exploration of human existence through ruins and meditation

김기훈 KIM GI HOON • gihoooon2@naver.com

REUSE THE ABBEY

Meditation is hard to define, but in the broadest sense, it’s a way of going inward. For this project, we focused on the concept of ruins, former monasteries, based on the two keywords ‘ruins’ and ‘meditation’. Ruins reveal different layers of time, reflecting the construction, collapse, and re-collapse of a structure over time, showing the instability of the present and future alongside the glory of the past. They represent the merging of man-made objects with nature over time, blurring the boundaries between art and nature. Ruins thus become an allegorical element that goes beyond mere annihilation to suggest new possibilities.

In particular, the project looks at the ‘ruin’ of the Church of Del Piano Maria through this ‘allegorical interpretation’, linking the melancholy and sublime inherent in it to moral emotions, which leads humans to ‘question their own existence’, which can be understood not as a harmonious and beautiful form, but as an aesthetic of the sublime in which he form is disrupted.

From this perspective, ruins become aesthetic objects where art and nature coexist, as well as objects of meditation.

The allegorical interpretation works in two ways. First, the site itself, which has been long abandoned and is like a “maze” in the woods. The labyrinth forces the user to find their own way, creating a meditation-like experience. Secondly, the ruins of the Del Piano Cathedral itself are also subject to allegorical interpretation: they hold a myriad of emotions and meanings, making them a ‘maze’ where you don’t know where to turn.

Therefore, the project was conceived as a meditation center for the mind and body wandering in the ‘labyrinth’: from the outside, the structure is hidden in the forest, symbolizing spiritual orientation. Inside, the juxtaposition of a fully formed water space and a ruin invites the visitor to reconnect with their ‘being’ and focus their scattered souls.