Ghostly Architecture & Latent Memory: How Do Ho Suh Inspired My Spatial Return to Age 9

In interior design, space is typically defined by permanence—solid walls, structural weight, fixed materials, and pristine surfaces. For over two decades, my work in quiet luxury was centered on building these physical realities for clients.

Yet as I navigate my MA Fine Art Digital at Central Saint Martins, my understanding of space has inverted. I am no longer interested in constructing permanent physical boundaries; I am interested in building spatial memories.

In my project, No Time Has Been Lost, I examine the 45-year period between age 9—when my father left—and age 54 today. My father, who has just had a solo exhibition in Macau last month, a master photographer who relied purely on in-camera movement with no editing, created a world for me framed by light, seaside horizons, and the amber glow of our improvised bedroom darkroom.

To give physical form to a memory that is simultaneously absent and entirely present, I turned to the work of Korean artist Do Ho Suh.

The Weightlessness of Remembered Space

Do Ho Suh is renowned for constructing full-scale architectural environments—childhood homes, apartments, corridors, and doorways—entirely out of translucent, hand-sewn fabric (polyester polyester mesh or silk).

When you step into a Do Ho Suh installation, several profound spatial shifts occur:

1. Permeability Over Permanence: The walls do not block light; they absorb and diffuse it. You can see through three rooms at once.
2. Portability of Memory: By using fabric, Suh can fold up a lifetime of domestic memory into a suitcase and reconstruct it anywhere in the world.
3. The Architecture of Ghostly Presence: The rooms look like 3D spatial drawings floating in mid-air—present enough to define a room, yet sheer enough to remind you that the physical structure no longer exists in real time.

Suh does not rebuild brick and mortar; he reconstructs the feeling of having once inhabited a space.

Connecting Do Ho Suh to No Time Has Been Lost

For my CSM installation, Suh’s methodology offers the exact spatial mechanism I need to bridge my 20-year design practice with my father’s photographic legacy.

1. Reconstructing the 1970s Bedroom-Darkroom

My strongest memory of my father is the room where images emerged—my childhood bedroom converted into a temporary darkroom under red safelight. Using sheer fabric structures inspired by Suh, I can recreate the architectural volume of that room inside the CSM studio space. The walls won’t be drywall; they will be semi-translucent scrim or silk panels hanging from the ceiling.

2. Fabric as a Projection Screen for Light and In-Camera Motion

Where Suh uses light to illuminate the delicate stitching of his fabric homes, I will use his spatial layering as a projection vessel.

My father’s original photographs—captured using physical camera motion—and my own current video footage will be projected through sequential layers of translucent fabric. Because the fabric is sheer, an image projected onto one layer bleeds through to various layers.

3. Spatializing “No Time Lost”

If memory were a solid brick wall, age 9 and age 54 would be separated by an opaque barrier. But through Do Ho Suh’s translucent logic, space becomes porous.

When a viewer walks around and through these hung fabric planes, their physical movement causes the projected images of the past and present to align, separate, and blur together—mirroring my father’s rule of in-camera motion without software editing. Past and present do not sit on opposite sides of a timeline; they coexist inside the same transparent room.

From Interior Design to Spatial Art

Do Ho Suh demonstrated to the art world that space does not need heavy structural materials to convey deep emotional resonance. A sheet of translucent silk, suspended with mathematical precision, can hold as much weight as concrete.

As I transition from designing client interiors to building fine art installations, Suh’s work serves as a reminder that my 20 years of spatial discipline were not lost either. I am simply using light, translucency, and fabric to build the one interior that truly matters: the room where my father and I remain in continuous conversation.