Faculty

Heechan Kim is an artist and designer whose practice investigates form through material processes and embodied making. Working primarily with wood, his sculptures emerge through systems of bending, joining, and layering that foreground the relationship between structure, labor, and time.

His work examines how objects hold memory—how repeated actions, physical constraints, and material resistance accumulate into form. Positioned between sculpture, design, and craft, his practice engages questions of material intelligence and object culture, exploring how making can function as a mode of research.

In parallel with his studio work, Kim’s teaching approaches design as an open-ended inquiry, encouraging students to engage material, process, and form as interconnected ways of thinking.

Studio Approach

Design studio 3 : New York as Method

This studio approaches New York City not simply as a site, but as a shared field of investigation. Like a curated exhibition, the work of the class will be developed as a collective inquiry—each student contributing a perspective, while also participating in a larger narrative. Through observation of systems, places, people, and everyday behaviors, students will identify conditions within the city and interpret them through design. The emphasis is not on isolated problem-solving, but on constructing a body of work that reveals how the city operates, where it fails, and what it makes visible or invisible.

Across the semester, students will develop two projects from a continuous line of research, testing different entries into the same subject. At the same time, the class will work as a cohort to organize, categorize, and connect their investigations into a shared publication. Inspired by the structure of field guides and manuals, the book will function as both archive and system—mapping relationships, cross-referencing ideas, and constructing meaning through proximity and contrast. Design, in this studio, is not only about producing objects, but about framing, editing, and communicating a way of seeing.

This course asks students to move beyond individual authorship and engage in collective storytelling: to position their work within a broader context, to recognize connections across projects, and to take responsibility for how their contributions shape the whole. The final outcome is not just a set of projects, but a designed understanding of New York—constructed together.

2007-2010 Master of Fine Art, Furniture Design, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY

2001-2006 Bachelor of Fine Art, Metal Art and Jewelry, Seoul National University, Seoul South Korea