Alumni Zhengyan Jin (MUD 2015), Weiming Shi (MUD 2015), and current undergraduate Architectural Studies students Yujie Wang and Yang Yue recently won the Director’s Choice Award for the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) Underground Bath House Competition hosted by Arch Out Loud.

The competition asked participants to explore the possibility of creating an underground bathhouse within the Korean DMZ that responded to the surrounding geopolitical conditions. Titled “Unresolved Line,” the team created a proposal that could perpetually respond to the political tension between two nations.

“By having a series of chronological assigned vertical pipelines that connect to the underground mechanical system dotting along the demarcation line of DMZ zone, the project becomes an effort to both reconnect people to the geopolitical history and unify them in the realm of light, water, and fog,” writes the team in their project statement. “More importantly, the architecture has to grow along with such political tension, and therefore, remains as an unfinished project.”

All the winning entries to the competition can be viewed on the Arch Out Loud website.

Jin and Shi previously won honorable mention in the 2015 Urban Ideas Competition for their Brampton City Centre Revitalization proposal, which also included team member Zhiyu Liu (MLA 2016). Liu, Jin, and Shi envisioned transforming the commuter suburb by ennhancing accessibility, improving the main streets and traffic circulation, and encompassing stategies to expand restaurant and retail businesses in the area.