For All that Breathes on Earth: Jung Youngsun and Collaborators

For All That Breathes on Earth: Jung Youngsun and Collaborators, the first major international exhibition of Korea’s foremost landscape architect Jung Youngsun (b. 1941), opens on Friday May 9, 2025 to the public at SMAC San Marco Art Centre. The exhibition is organised by Seoul’s National Museum of Contemporary Art, MMCA in partnership with SMAC San Marco Art Centre.

Jung Youngsun was the first Korean woman to earn the title of land development engineer. Her work fostered a new sensitivity to rehabilitation and the creation of green spaces, both in urban settings and in various public and private domains, focused on designing not only for nature but also for communities, creating resilient and sustainable havens.

Curated by Jihoi Lee (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea), For All That Breathes On Earth: Jung Youngsun and Collaborators will recount and document the breadth of her practice, which has always aimed to give locations a distinct spatial identity rather than merely linking buildings and their surroundings. Presented as part of the inaugural program of SMAC San Marco Art Centre, a pioneering new arts institution in the heart of Venice opening on May 9, the exhibition design will incorporate traditional Korean wood-building techniques.

Youngsun’s work incorporates living materials, favouring native species that enhance the beauty of the void. The social role of landscape architecture is exemplified in Jung Youngsun’s work through the creation of harmonious spaces for socialisation, contemplation, and meditation, which unlock the regenerative powers of nature.

Among her projects, the exhibition highlights those designed and built for major international events, such as the Seoul Olympics, the Asian Games, and the Daejeon Expo’93. These ambitious state-led projects, which presented opportunities for economic, cultural, and technological advancement, inspired Jung Youngsun to leave teaching and enter the field of landscape architecture in earnest, founding the landscape architecture firm Seo-Ahn Total Landscape (STL) in 1987.

Since the 1980s, she has been dedicated to reclaiming urban suburbs by creating facilities for leisure, sports, art, and tourism—designing captivating environments that enhance nature’s self-healing properties. During this period, she developed an archetypal resort suited to Korea’s mountainous terrain. She also established arboretums and botanical gardens where nature and humans coexist and interact harmoniously. These include the Amorepacific Botanic Garden, composed solely of plants used in cosmetics, and the Asan Medical Center, a forested space where families and patients can mourn in peace, comforted by nature, which nourishes both body and spirit.

Jung Youngsun has also worked extensively on the restoration and regeneration of the Han River, creating a sequence of parks aimed at improving the river ecosystem through self-healing wetlands. By connecting aquatic spaces, she has revitalized areas that had been cemented over and become degraded.

The dialogue between nature and architecture has always been central to Jung Youngsun’s research in landscape architecture, as has the equally fundamental relationship between land, ecosystems, and people.

The international presentation of the exhibition is made possible by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange, in commemoration of the Year of Korea-Italy Cultural Exchange. The presentation at SMAC San Marco Art Centre is sponsored by AMOREPACIFIC, Sulwhasoo and Samsung Foundation of Culture.

For press enquiries please contact press [​at​] smac.org.

International press: Gillian McVey, Sara Macdonald, sara [​at​] gillianmcvey.com. Italian press: Studio ESSECI, Roberta Barbaro, roberta [​at​] studioesseci.net.