SPACE EXPLORER

SAN FRANCISCO ARCHITECT KYU CHE IS BRINGING HIS POETIC VISION OF CONTEMPORARY LIVING TO THE ART WORLD. BY LYDIA LEE

Kyu Che has two desks in his office. The San Francisco architect spends part of the week at one, working on commercial and residential designs. He moves to the other to explore more conceptual ideas, illustrating a parallel universe where people live in minimalist pods. Now he's bringing his renderings into the real world by building those dwellings as art installations.

Che, who is originally from Korea, got his architecture degree at UC Berkeley in 1989 and then worked at a couple of major area firms. "I was doing very high-end work, designing $20-million houses, which was what I thought we all want to do," he says. "But I always felt a certain emptiness."

Che opened an independent practice in 1997. While creating modern buildings accented by natural materials, he started sketching an alternative kind of housing. Inspired by airplane fuselages and teh portable homes of Mongolian nomads, Che designed the Lifepod. The concept: a collapsible, modular home that is biomorphic in form and can adapt to any environment, adjusting to surfaces with telescoping legs or pontoons.

Che has already built a few versions of the Lifepod as art spaces. For the 2006 exhibition "Five Habitats: Squatting at Langton," he created five artist's studios-including a couple of capsule-shaped environments-within San Francisco's New Langton Arts gallery. He's also in conversation with developers who are interested in the Lifepod for their international eco-resorts.