CONVERSATIONS
IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT


BRYAN KIM

















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“Conversation” is the exchange of ideas, information, and emotions between two entities. In architecture, conversations manifest as dynamic interactions across multiple scales, from materiality to urbanism.

Listed projects serve as mediators that integrate diverse scales (human / non-human) into a cohesive whole. They shape conversations between users, materials, spaces, urban lives, and environments, fostering a dynamic built environment. Through design, buildings shape their context, facilitating dialogues between past and present, tradition and innovation, the built and the organic.

These ongoing interactions ensure that architecture remains a living, responsive medium—one that continuously negotiates relationships between people, places, and the external forces that shape them. Therefore, my projects are not merely static objects but active participants of an ever-evolving conversation in our built environment.











conversations with  
 1. The City
2. The Water
3. The Heat
4. The Wood

SOFT LOBBY

conversations with the city
  • Master of Architecture | Thesis Project
  • Spring 2025

  • Primary Advisor: James Leng
  • Secondary Advisor: Rene Davids


Soft Lobby proposes to transform underutilized corporate lobby spaces of Downtown San Francisco into vibrant Privately Owned Public Open Spaces (POPOS), enhancing public access to urban social spaces by expanding the public thresholds on the ground floor.

By reimagining these underused areas, the project seeks to propose truly open public spaces, addressing the need for social sustainability and revitalization of Downtown San Francisco.

The project seeks opportunities in reconfiguring existing lobby spaces into urban oases for the public. By proposing a new concept of “incentive zoning” first introduced in the 1961 Zoning Resolution of New York City, the project encourages developers to fully publicize their portions of their lobby spaces in exchange for tenant attraction and revitalization of Downtown.

Through close examination of planning code regulations, developer/planner relationships, and the architecture of POPOS, the project will bridge the gap between private and public realms both in its practice and product. 




Physical Model | The Upside Down City
The Upside Down City represents the potential open spaces at the ground floor in red.

By flipping the buildings of Downtown San Francisco, the Upside Down City reveals the ground footprint, highlighting its density and potential openness achievable through “Lobby Commons.”  In the entirety of the modeled site that include the Financial District and SOMA, usable lobby spaces make up about 16% of the total building footprint.

Through the activation of these underutilized ground floor spaces, “Lobby Commons” aims to revitalize the street of Downtown San Francisco, encouraging community engagement and increasing tenant attraction to mitigate vacancy rates.
 
















Epmty Lobbies of Downtown San Francisco










Public Intervention through Activity Programming