Portfolio: Wunjin Hwang '22 (MFA2)

The Office of Academic Affairs awarded Wunjin Hwang ’22 (MFA2), whose thesis project is featured on this page, the Chairman’s Award for her overall performance at NYSID. At NYSID, thesis projects are long journeys that challenge students to brainstorm, conduct research, and synthesize all they have learned. The journey ends with a presentation to a jury of faculty and industry professionals. Our students work closely with faculty to create hypothetical designs that offer solutions to real-world problems.

Student: Wunjin Hwang
Project: Maison Margiela Flagship Store
Program: Master of Fine Arts (Post-professional)
Instructor: Stefanie Werner

For her capstone project, Wunjin Hwang was drawn to the high-end fashion brand Maison Margiela for two reasons. The first is that the brand regards fashion as a form of artistic expression. The second is that the brand philosophy is “Appropriating the inappropriate.” Maison Margiela is about taking norms, or rather, classic representations of beauty, breaking them down, and reconstructing them. Hwang is a sculptor, so her interpretation of “breaking the norm” became three-dimensional. Working inside the hard rectangles of an industrial warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn, she created an organic, fluid, folding, three-dimensional structure and stairwell to “break the cube” of the linear building. She sculpted this form with clay first, and then researched how to actually build it with UHPC (ultra-high performance concrete) cast over a wire skeleton. She envisioned the experience for the Maison Margiela client would be one of wonder as they stepped off the ferry into Red Hook and entered a destination. The first thing a visitor would see would be the exhibition space for high-end clothing, made otherworldly by curtains of wire. The textured brick and wood would contrast with the smooth concrete surfaces. The user would climb the sinuous stairwell to find fitting rooms for the exclusive collections. At the end of the journey, the visitors would be exposed to more affordable items. Says Hwang, “Stefanie Werner helped me with architecture, helping me understand how to make the building possible in the real world. My mentor, Sun Her, kept bringing me back to my concept so I would not get lost in the details.