Mass Studies:

Mass Studies was founded in 2003 by Minsuk Cho in Seoul, Korea, as a critical investigation of architecture in the context of mass production, intensely over-populated urban conditions, and other emergent cultural niches that define contemporary society.

Amid the many frictions defining spatial conditions in the twenty-first century, namely past vs. future, local vs. global, utopia vs. reality, and individual vs. collective, Mass Studies focuses on the operative complexity of these multiple conditions instead of striving for a singular, unified perspective.

For each architectural project, which exist across a wide range of scales, Mass Studies explores issues such as spatial systems/matrixes, building materials/techniques, and typological divergences to foster a vision that allows the discovery of new socio/cultural potential.

Minsuk Cho, AIA, Principal, Mass Studies

Minsuk Cho was born in Seoul and graduated from the Architectural Engineering department of Yonsei University (Seoul, Korea) and the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University (New York).

He began his professional career working for Kolatan / MacDonald Studio, and Polshek and Partners in New York, and later moved to the Netherlands to work for OMA. Through these jobs, he gained experience in a wide range of architectural and urban projects implemented in various locations.

With business partner James Slade, he established Cho Slade Architecture in 1998 in New York City to be engaged in various projects both in the U.S. and Korea. In 2003, He came back to Korea to open his own firm, Mass Studies.

He has received many awards including the first prize in the 1994 Shinkenchiku International Residential Architecture Competition for new dwelling design and the Architectural League of New York’s ‘Young Architects Award’ in 2000 for his work at Cho Slade Architecture.