Kim Swoo-geun studied architecture at Seoul National University before the Korean War, then trained at the Tokyo University of the Arts and took a master's degree at the University of Tokyo, where he befriended fellow student Arata Isozaki. He returned to Seoul in 1960 and in 1961 opened the practice that grew into Space Group, publishing the monthly review SPACE from 1966 and turning its own headquarters into a venue for experimental theatre and dance. Close to the political establishment under Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan, he carried out an unusual share of the state's own architecture, from the Freedom Center to the Olympic facilities built for 1988, work that TIME in 1977 likened to the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici. He taught at Hongik and Kookmin universities and died of liver cancer in 1986, aged 55.
