Ewha Campus Complex

Ewha Campus Complex (이화여자대학교) is one of my favorite architectures here in Seoul. Built by Dominique Perrault, this grand complex certainly left quite an impression for first time, even returning visitors. The modern campus complex is nothing like I've seen before anywhere else in this city. It is also interesting to see, even when they have this very modern building structure, they're still preserving the old 19th-century gothic brick buildings surrounding the top part of the complex.

Sharing the shots I took during winter, that particular day was pretty cold. So not a lot of people were crowding the place, only the locals who were braving the cold weather, I assumed. We got there right before sunset, and it was my first time too coming to the campus at that time of day. Seeing how the sunlight hit the vertical structure of the stainless metal was certainly a new experience.

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Seoul City Hall

Can't believe the first 6 months of 2015 is almost over. It's almost the end of June and time sure flies fast. The first half of 2015 have been super awesome for me. I think I've learned and experienced lots of new things that I've never imagined before. School life, work, (new) friends, and traveling probably occupied most of my time. Made lots of great memories and hopefully I can share it here later on :) Now that I'm back in Seoul, I finally have a down time to work through all the backlogged photos that have been sitting on my hard drive all these times :p

Sharing one of the sessions from earlier this year, a visit to Seoul City Hall (서울시청) with Ken and Davina in one cold winter day. To be honest, the interior of the city hall kinda reminds me just a little of Singapore's famous Cloud Forest at Gardens by the Bay (but of course Cloud Forest is much more impressive) just because they have all these green plants on the walls with the concrete structure on the background. But anyways, the whole building is pretty cool. Lots of natural light (we went on a pretty bright sunny day), tall windows, and interesting building structure. A lot of different angles you can play with when taking shots. There were lots of older people that were hanging out in the cafe on the upper floor—reading or meeting up with their friends. Although seeing that made me think of how much official business actually going on around here? ;p

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National Museum of Korea • 국립중앙박물관

I got a chance to go visit National Museum of Korea (국립중앙박물관) during a school field trip. The complex is really huge. You have to walk across an open area before entering this big tall building. My first impression stepping into the museum was this place has a really nice natural lighting. High ceilings with windows really gives a nice soft lighting around the open area of the museums. For architecture fans, this place is worth a visit. Plus if you venture outside the museum, you can see the N Seoul Tower on the background. 

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Kyunghee University • 경희대학교

This year's spring was my first spring in Seoul. I remembered this particular day when I went to Kyunghee University (경희대학교) with Ken was one of the first warm days in Seoul at the end of winter. Everybody seemed to want to enjoy the warmer weather while looking at the cherry blossom that has sprung out here and there through out the city. I've never been to Kyunghee University before and thought it's pretty interesting how the campus structure is so heavily influenced by the greek & gothic architecture. It's kinda feels a little bit out of place in the middle of Seoul's architecture in my opinion, but don't take me wrong, the campus is still pretty. Kinda reminded me of New York a little bit for some reason.

It was a Friday (plus the weather was really nice), so the place was pretty packed with students who were having picnics (there was even ahjussis who were renting out picnic mats & handing out chinese delivery menus, and yes they deliver it to wherever you are sitting down), elementary and high school students—who I assumed were having field trips, tourists, and couples. So. Many. Couples. Couples everywhere!! Seriously. 

Anyways, the campus is pretty, but it's a little bit hard to photograph, especially if you wanna get an aerial shot. We ended up having to go up a building to get the shot of the campus complex.

Fun Fact: For those of you who are really into your K-pop Idols and Korean actors/actresses, you probably already know that lots of famous celebrities graduated from this place. As for me, I only found out about that when I googled the place. And turns out one of my fav singers, G-Dragon, graduated from here :p

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MMCA Seoul • 국립현대미술관

My first two trips to the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Seoul—also known as MMCA Seoul—were 3 days apart and both were with a couple of friends from Instagram, a couple who I met for the first time—Nico, Robin, and Ian.  This was back in January so I'm guessing the exhibitions are probably different by now. The space is pretty cool, so I thought I share a couple of shots from our visit. 

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