Jungyoon Kim

Founding Director, PARKKIM 
Assistant Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture,
Harvard Graduate School of Design

Jungyoon Kim is Assistant Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Founding Director of PARKKIM, a Seoul and Boston based landscape architectural firm. PARKKIM's works have been recognized by contemporary design professionals and theorists. The two principals were invited for lectures and talks by prestigious institutions globally such as University of Melbourne, Smith College, University of Texas at Austin and Landscape Australia Conference.

The notion of ‘alternative nature,’ which has been PARKKIM’s agenda in its practice and publication, has been also explored in Kim’s research and teaching at Harvard GSD, including her on-going research “The ‘Making’ of Gangnam Alternative Nature in Mitigating the Impact of Climate Change.”

Kim was selected as the ‘Design Leader of Next Generation' (2007) awarded by the Korean Ministry of Commerce and appointed to ‘Seoul Public Architect' (2011) by the Metropolitan Government Seoul. She taught at Wageningen University and Seoul National University and was honorably appointed as the Glimcher Distinguished Visiting Professor by Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State University (2011).

She received a Master of Landscape Architecture from the GSD and a Bachelor of Agriculture from Seoul National University with distinction.”

Why women? Why climate change? Why Now?

We are noticing the significant climatic changes all over the world, so it becomes harder for anyone to deny that the climate change is real. Architectural professionals are challenged to come up with real solutions, distinguished from what conservationists would argue, as the professionals who fabricate the spaces to dwell. If we all can accept that the fundamental reason of the changes is the anthropogenic disturbance to natural system, the role of landscape architects who have been dealing with nature, either by mimicking, preserving, representing, or symbolizing it, is obvious— we need to lead to reshape how the practice and its collaboration with others have been executed and how the environment has been altered by multiple disciplines. These processes would require a kind of leadership that embraces all the corners of a society, especially the weak who are impacted more seriously. Women, who often have been positioned in the rear rows, are in general dexterous in handling the easy -to-be-ignored facet.

What is the biggest challenge facing women leaders in male dominated field and how to overcome them?

In many cases, women create the barriers for themselves. I have been trying to break out of the shell that no one created. I am a wife, a mom, a daughter, a sister, a director, and a teacher and I sometimes fell guilty thinking that I am not good enough for all the positions that I have. But we all must realize that no one leader is perfect, men and women. We are living in the era with many problems that not one perfect leader could solve but require collaborative and enduring efforts. That said, we don't need to be empowered to lead, but empower others who we work together. And that is what women are good at, in general.

What are the pressing issues you are contributing as a landscape architect for tackle climate change?

My current interest both as educator and practitioner is what landscape architects can and should do to mitigate the climate change, other than updating the planting palette and using permeable paving units. Urbanization have extracted the ground and underground so much as if the natural resources will be regenerated for us forever. Groundwater and aquifer are drying out, urban topsoil diminish , subsoil strata are weakened. 

At the GSD,  through a series of option studios, I have been encouraging the students to look at the underground as deep as -100m in connection with the changes in land uses above, so that they can realize whatever we are doing on the surface will eventually impact its subterrain very much, and in turn the disturbed underground will make visible chasms. In my practice, PARKKIM currently designs projects with various scales and characteristics, ranging from a high-end residential  to a mixed-use urban development. In Seoul, we also suffer from the increased torrential rain and urban heat islands and we take those phenomena into consideration as the very fundamental problems to solve and collaborate with engineers to come up with real solutions.

How your work contributes to other women?

My parents did not raise me as a 'female' but as a member of the society- always told me and my siblings to be kind and well-mannered to others and not to lie. And those are what I tell my daughter often as well. Hopefully my daughter's generation won't need to think about their gender anymore and I wish I can be seen as a well-mannered professional who contributed to the society, not just as a woman.