Charles is a designer currently based in Boston. Stemming from his background in architecture, he is interested in materials, DIY, and the aesthetics of affordability. He uses his digital rendering skills to help communicate his interests at the time. Since graduating from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2022, he has been working as an architectural designer at Utile.
Artist Statement
The works in my drawer are explorations done between 2019 – 2021 during my graduate school studies. It is an experiment that attempts to capture the aesthetics of softness and communicate it through images and animations. The images are my reactions to the continued sleekness sought by architects and designers where the spaces we live in are no longer physically relatable. Glass, concrete, steel have become dominant building materials since the 1900s but have also rendered contemporary architecture ubiquitous.
As designers, we have the skills to imagine buildings using alternative materials; not as a final product, but for conversation. The last true building innovation came with our ability to bend steel to any form possibly imaginable. Although these materials have become extremely efficient to manufacture and build, it still neglects the initial carbon footprint to actually create these materials from scratch. Beyond aesthetic variety, alternative materials can help reduce the embodied carbon of our currently popular building materials.
The images shown are my imaginations of how architecture can transform if designers took advantage of how far textiles have come since the invention of PTFE back in the 1930s. They don’t answer any questions but I hope they can help you imagine an alternate future.
Instagram: @tnalscharleskim
Personal website
images of work
