Kyong Park was born in Korea and moved to the United States at the age of twelve. He received a BS in Architecture from the University of Michigan in 1978 and participated in a post-graduate independent program at the Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies in 1979.

Professional Work and Career

Kyong was the founding director of Centrala Foundation for Future Cities in Rotterdam [2005], a co-curator of Europe Lost and Found, a project on future geography of Europe, and a founding member of Lost Highway, a mass expedition through nine cities in the Western Balkans. He is the editor of Urban Ecology: Detroit and Beyond [2005], a co-curator for Shrinking Cities in Berlin [2002-2004], the founding director of International Center for Urban Ecology in Detroit [1999-2001], a curator of Kwangju Biennale in South Korea [1997], a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University [1996], and the founder/director of StoreFront for Art and Architecture in New York [1982-98].

Research and Art Practice

As an architect, artist, urban theorist and activist, Kyong Park's research and artistic practice focuses on the city. He is particularly interested in the conditions which give rise to shrinking cities (Detroit, for instance) and expanding cities (as in Asia) and to the formation and reconfiguration of border cities (such as San Diego/Tijuana). His current work is focused on Asian cities. The New Silk Roads is a research project based on a planned expedition from Istanbul to Tokyo. This expedition is a way of gathering images and information in order to understand the relation between the physical movements of products/labor/resources and the immaterial movements of information/capital/services over the real and virtual landscapes of Asia. Its purpose is to better understand the cultural, political and economic interplay between East and West. Kyong Park is interested in interdisciplinary projects that alter the borders between the different disciplines and their practices. He was founder/director of StoreFront for Art and Architecture in New York, founding member of the International Center for Urban Ecology in Detroit and founding director of the Centrala Stichting voor Toekomstige Steden of Rotterdam.

Teaching

Kyong Park is an acting associate professor of Public Culture in the department of Visual Arts at UC San Diego.