A man visits the award-winning Korean pavilion on architectural transformation of the two Koreas during the 14th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in Venice, Saturday.







Architect Cho Min-suk holds up the Golden Lion award for the Best National Participation at the

14th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, in Venice, Saturday.

/ AP-Yonhap

By Lee Kyung-min

The Korea pavilion won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation the 14th International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venizia, organizers announced Saturday. This is the first time for Korea to win the prestigious award.

Themed "Crow's Eye View: The Korean Peninsula," the Korean pavilion featured architecture from the two Koreas.

Cho Min-suk, the commissioner and curator of the pavilion, said that he wanted to bring attention to the architectural transformation in Seoul and Pyongyang. Inspired by modern Korean poet Yi Sang (1910-1937), the exhibition was named after his poem "Crow's Eye View."

"Someday, I hope we can do a show on the architecture of the two countries without any drama attached to it," Cho said during the award ceremony on Saturday. "We looked back at the last 100 years of architecture on the Korean Peninsula as a way of envisioning the future of the two countries."

His work, underlining the division of the two Koreas, received positive reviews from biennale's director Rem Koolhaas and other influential art world figures such as the art critic and the Swiss Pavilion commissioner Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Cho's buildings have often addressed Korean quality in a contemporary way.

The nation's leading architect won global attention when he designed the phenomenal Korea pavilion with a Hangeul (Korean alphabet) motive at the 2010 Shanghai Expo.

Cho, CEO of Mass Studies, trained at the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia, New York. Most of his works are in Korea, but some have made it overseas, like the "Air Forest" set up in Denver, U.S., in 2008 and the "Ring Dome" seen in Milan and Yokohama.

He divided the exhibit into four sub-themes; reconstructing life, monumental state, borders and utopian tours. Curators Pai Hyung-min, Ahn Chang-mo and deputy curator Lee Ji-hoi helped Cho to organize the pavilion.

A highlight of the pavilion is Seoul's Sewoon district in the 1960s, the major commercial and manufacturing area at the time, and how the area was built and later flourished.

Pyongyang, a typical state-planned city, consists of "juche" sculpture, representing the state ideology of "self-reliance," and the Youth Palaces reflect the state regime of Communism.

The exhibition features works of 29 artists including Nick Bonner, Ahn Se-kwon, Kim Ki-chan, Peter Noever and Park Kyong.

Korea first participated in the Venice Biennale in 1995, led by the late media artist Paik Nam-june. Paik suggested a joint exhibition of the two Koreas, but it was never realized.

A total of 40 countries took part in the international architecture exhibition. The Architecture Biennale runs through Nov. 23 at various venues in Venice.