Jeonghwa Seo

The Structured Nature in Materialism

Translating the Architecture of Nature through Playful Structural Experimentation

In Jeonghwa Seo’s work, nature is tempered by the structured discipline of material form. His practice begins in the dense forest near his Paju studio and in the weight of stones he handles in his yard. What he brings back to the workshop is the structure — the geometry hidden inside natural forms, extracted and made usable. His furniture pieces resist easy categorisation: too considered to be purely functional, too grounded in daily use to be mere sculpture. What they are, are investigations into what materials to remember, what they ask of the body, and what happens when things that do not belong together are made to coexist.

A Philosophical Approach to Materiality

After completing his undergraduate degree in Metal Art and Design at Hongik University, Seo pursued a Master's in Contextual Design at Design Academy Eindhoven, an institution famous for its auteur-led practice, epitomized by designers like Piet Hein Eek and Maarten Baas. Where Eek built philosophy out of salvaged timber and Baas out of charred surface, Seo found his own conversation between materials in their most essential state.

The result was the Material Container series, launched in 2013. The premise is stripped to its core: a conical base topped with a flat disc-shaped seat, each component from a different material chosen for the tension it creates with the other. Basalt and Brass. Copper and cherry. Aluminium and woven rush. The combinations are not decorative choices but structural arguments creating a form of harmony from the contrast of materials. Over a decade on, the series has expanded to more than fifteen pairings and continues to evolve.

Nature as Structure, Not Decoration

Living and working in Paju, surrounded by mountains and forest, Seo finds his creative material not in images but in direct physical encounters. The daily act of gardening, handling stones, observing soil layers, watching trees root rise, feeds into his work less as visual reference and more as structural thinking.

For Seo, it seems that nature can be rendered with logic. His Ambiguity series makes this most explicit: inspired by the experience of standing inside a dense forest, the work shows the layered complexity in aluminium forms, where trunks overlap and the eye cannot find a clear boundary. The forest is not depicted. It is translated into a different material language. He says,

"The materials a person can work with from nature are limited, what matters is the way you handle and interpret them".

His favourite pairing in the Material Container series remains basalt and brass. His use of basalt frequently prompts associations with Jeju Island, where the volcanic stone defines the landscape and has a long history of local craft. Seo is aware of this but resists letting geography become the story. The material interests him for what it physically is — its density, its texture, its thermal presence — before it is a place.

The Ethics of Making

Seo's studio practice reflects a conviction that focuses on material. A designer who does not understand the physical behaviour of a material cannot make honest decisions about it. He researches directly — visiting manufacturers, consulting craftspeople, meeting the specialists who have spent careers understanding a single substance. First-stage fabrication is outsourced to those experts; final polishing and assembly are done by Seo himself. His working drawings are loose sketches rather than technical renderings, leaving room for the material to participate in the outcome. "I think about the variables," he says, "and then I adjust through the assembly, through the surface work."

What Seo seems to understand, more than most, is that materials have already made certain decisions before a designer ever touches them. His job, as he sees it, is simply to hear and translate in his language to what they have already agreed to become.