Sun-Young Rieh

Sun-Young Rieh (Korean: 이선영) is a Korean architect known for her writing and teachings on educational environments, sustainable architecture, and gender-conscious environments. As she is well versed in both practice and academia, her research strives to integrate with architectural design, particularly in the area of eco-friendly and human-friendly design. She is a professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Seoul, and has previously been awarded a Fulbright Visiting Scholar grant. She is also a registered architect in both Korea and the United States (NCARB), and she works as a public architect for the City of Seoul. She has served as a board member on multiple key councils for more than a decade, including the Korean Institute of Architects, the Architectural Institute of Korea, the Korea Green Building Council, and the Korea Institute of Female Architects. Her difficult experience has borne out a willingness to discuss gender realities that has marked her practice, teaching, and research.

Architectural Career and Design Research Rieh began her architectural career working in a number of firms. She started her design work in 1987 at Junglim Architecture in Seoul; she subsequently moved onto I.M. Pei and Associates in New York; Woo and Williams (later to become Kyu Sung Woo Architects) in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Bruner/Cott and Associates in Cambridge; Lake Flato in San Antonio, and Marmon Mok in San Antonio. Additionally, she worked as a public architect for the City of Seoul from 2013 to 2019. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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.

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.”

Additional Publications

"A Study on Elementary Schools as Community-Friendly Public Infrastructure Facilities for Aging Society: Focusing on Acceptance of Facilities for the Elderly" (National Research Foundation of Korea), 2019–2022 "A Study on Changes in School Learning Environment and Student Life Adaptation" (University of Seoul), 2018 "Development of Guidelines for the Eco-Friendly Renovation of Campus Buildings at the University of Seoul" (Seoul Metropolitan City/University of Seoul), 2013–2014 "The Aspects of Favorite Place in Urban Mini Schools" (Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea), April 2011 "How to Build a Women-Friendly City" (World Women's Forum), 2008 "An Analysis of Outdoor Space in Elementary School Design Based on the Possibility of Forming a Sense of Place for Children" (Journal of Korean Institute of Educational Facilities), September 2008. "Restructuring Architectural Education in Korea - With focus on Curriculum" (International Forum on Architectural Education) December 2003. "Aspects of Collaboration between Domestic and Foreign Architecture Firms in Korea" (Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea), October 1999. "A Study on the Curriculum in Architectural Education in the U.S.A" (Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea), October 1999 "A Critical Analysis on the Architectural Education in Korea from the view of International Accrediting Criteria" (Journal of Korean Association of Architectural History), March 1999