Cho Minsuk is an internationally award-winning architect and the founder of Seoul-based studio Mass Studies. After formative years at renowned practices including OMA in Rotterdam, he established Mass Studies in 2003 as a laboratory for investigating the conditions of 21st-century architecture, committed to expanding discourse through socio-cultural and urban research.

His recent work draws inspiration from Korean food culture—particularly the principles of fermentation—as a way of thinking about how architecture can take root, transform, and age into its landscapes. Across projects such as the Osulloc Tea Factory and Museum buildings on Jeju Island and the Choru visitor center in the Obongsan Mountains, Cho explores how buildings can act less as isolated objects and more as participants in broader ecological and cultural systems.

Presented at In Focus: Landscapes, The World Around’s first event in Asia (December 7, 2024), Cho’s talk connected the making of architecture to the production of food, asking how the ways we build might sustain, rather than sever, the delicate balance between nature and culture.