“What is the purpose of architecture? Materiality or spirituality?” These were some of the prompts Kyong Park—the Korean-American artist, architect, activist, and founder of Storefront for Art and Architecture—prepared ahead of a 1988 discussion he organized at the nonprofit art space on the topic of public architecture and private development. As many of us do at certain stages in life, I have been thinking a lot about how spirituality can offer a path to a more enriching and intentional way of living. But before visiting Storefront’s latest exhibition, Public Space in a Private Time, I hadn’t given much thought to architecture in the spiritual sense, which I take to mean a deep feeling of aliveness, compassion, and connectedness to our environment, ourselves, and others. Today’s New York doesn’t inspire inklings of connectedness; in many ways, it seems designed to increase discomfort and isolation.
Park founded Storefront with R.L. Seltman forty years ago in a ten-foot-by-twenty-one-foot storefront at 51 Prince Street, when SoHo was in full transition from a…