Seyeong ChoiSeyeong Choi
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Architectural Serendipity

From unintended uses to “relay architecture”: a proposal for layering the intentions of different designers.

Adaptive Reuse and Serendipity

Serendipity means discovering something valuable by chance.1 What, then, is serendipity in architecture? We might call it architectural serendipity when a building is used differently from its creator’s intention, yet that use is meaningful and positive. Adaptive reuse is a representative example. Many buildings in Seongsu illustrate this: structures designed as factories now accommodate cafés, cultural venues, shops, and other new uses.2

Serendipity and Sustainability

Serendipity has implications for sustainability in architecture. The possibility that a building can serve an unintended new purpose—and do so meaningfully and positively—means that it can remain in use even after its original function disappears. This suggests that architecture that deliberately invites serendipity could offer a model for sustainable architecture.

Intentional Serendipity

There is a contradiction in the phrase “intentional serendipity.” Deliberately producing something that arises entirely by chance seems to rest on a faulty premise. In architecture, excluding the architect’s intention makes this seem even more paradoxical. Yet it may be possible by multiplying the sources of intention. To reflect several intentions is, in the end, to fully reflect none of them. I see this as a way of generating chance: an absence of any single intention.

Relay Architecture

Against this background, I would like to propose a new architectural method: “relay architecture.”

In relay architecture, several architects each carry out their own process before passing the work to the next person. Unlike conventional collaboration, they do not explain their intentions or design methods to one another. They pass on only the visible outputs, such as plans and massing. Each participant’s intentions and interpretations become part of a single work, producing architecture that responds to its place and context while containing several intentions. Its significance lies in the possibility that, when one use disappears, another can be introduced, allowing the building to serve different purposes.

Footnotes

  1. Definition reference: Dictionary.com, “serendipity”. ↩

  2. Adaptive reuse in Seongsu: Seoul Tourism Organization, Daelim Warehouse Gallery. ↩