Conversing with Place: Dialectogram of Branded Housing

How would we engage with residential buildings that are highly curated like Disneyland? The image presented is a dialectogram I created as part of my field research on the branded housing named “Hildesheim” in my hometown of Osong, South Korea. The drawing illustrates façadescapes in expressive lines and annotates the experiences encountered in-situ. Annotations in the drawing use the same strategies of organizing data crucial in branding. However, they work in a different direction to encourage decentralized reading and therefore to challenge the top-down script of branded housing. To question the power of “official” designs envisioned by the developer, annotations are created in hyperbolic and satirical manner, externalizing branding strategies for architecture that are meant be hidden and implicit. The annotations on the architectural layers of branded housing are also considered from various dimensions—ranging from formal to functional and semiotic—to provide an “extended glance” on the branded housing. The drawing aims to show how the complexities of everyday lives and our imaginations tied to places are seized by the desire to organize. The drawing therefore acts as a provocation, hijacking the strategic architectural production of developers for first-person experience and knowledge.