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Caption: CAC members (from left: Kwak Seung-chan, Chung Dahyoung, Kim Heejung and Jung Sungkyu)
An entire exhibition about the VOLA taps, from 1968 till present time, took place in Seoul, South Korea, in the autumn of 2025. How come that the Koreans take this interest in modernistic taps designed and produced in Denmark?
By Louise Witt
The idea to do the exhibition about VOLA in Seoul, South Korea, came from curator Chung Dahyoung and her team: the Curating Architecture Collective.
For 14 years she was a curator in architecture and design at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and at the 2025 Venice Biennale she was co-artistic director of the Korean Pavilion. Now, apart from being a design professor, she leads the Curating Architecture Collective (CAC), which organizes several exhibitions in South Korea every year.
It was a visit to the Danish embassy in Seoul five years ago that sparked her interest in VOLA.
“I was aware that the renowned architect Arne Jacobsen first introduced VOLA at the National Bank of Denmark. However, I personally became more closely acquainted with VOLA at this event at the embassy, and it became a meaningful opportunity for me to gain a deeper understanding of the history of VOLA, “ explains Chung Dahyoung.
She was inspired to explore nuances of the era of Danish Modern, which Koreans in general are quite familiar with, she says – specially designs like Arne Jacobsen’s Egg Chair and Swan Chair and the SAS Hotel in Copenhagen, for which the chairs were originally designed. PH’s lamps are also well known.
“Why these works tend to resonate with Korean audiences? We think it may come down to the balance they strike between form and function. Without excess, yet never cold. That sensibility seems to touch something in the Korean aesthetic imagination,” she says on behalf of the curator team.
With the exhibition, called “TAP TIME TAP”, Chung Dahyoung and her colleagues found it interesting to unfold for the Korean visitors the philosophy of VOLA which they call: “the essence of Danish Modernism”.
Why do you say that?
“Furniture and lighting are, in some sense, still objects placed within a space. VOLA dissolves into space itself. Concealing the plumbing within the wall and leaving only the controls feels less like an aesthetic choice and more like an architectural conviction. Functional rationality, restraint of form, craftsmanship preserved within industrial production, the fact that all of these are realized together in one small object was what struck us,” she explains on behalf of the CAC team.
The philosophy behind VOLA also has a strong contemporary appeal in Korea, she explains:
“Korea, too, underwent rapid urbanization and residential modernization through the twentieth century, during which the bathroom and kitchen were long treated as peripheral, hidden spaces. Yet today, these rooms have been rediscovered in Korea as the very spaces that define the quality of life. The question Arne Jacobsen posed through VOLA in 1968: ‘Is a tap a fixture attached to a wall, or a module operating within an architectural order?‘ This is precisely the question that Korean architects and designers are now asking themselves,” she explains on behalf of the curator team.
“The answer is already embedded in the title: TAP, TIME, TAP. TAP is the birth of the tap and its modern meaning. TIME is the time through which Danish Modernism has flowed. And TAP is again the continuity of the VOLA system across time. We wanted visitors to move through these three layers and feel each one in sequence.”
“What we considered most essential, above all, was the concept of repairability. For an audience accustomed to a culture of consumption and replacement, this becomes a quiet but powerful question.”
What response have you experienced from visitors?
“Many researchers, designers, and architects visited the exhibition. A number of them were already familiar with VOLA products, but they said they had not known much about the background or the way the system actually works.”
“What was especially meaningful was that visitors responded strongly to the idea of repairability. In Korea, as in many other societies, we are accustomed to a culture in which products are replaced rather than repaired. In that context, the fact that VOLA has maintained the same modular logic for more than fifty years, and that its internal parts can be replaced and maintained, felt unfamiliar but very persuasive.”
What would you mention if you were to mention a design from South Korea with the same characteristics as VOLA?
“It is difficult to name a direct equivalent, because VOLA belongs very specifically to the history of Danish Modernism and industrial production. But if we think from a Korean context, I would mention the hanok, the traditional Korean house design focusing on harmony. Especially its wooden structure and joinery system. The purity of a hanok does not come simply from visual minimalism, but from the clarity of its structure. Each element — columns, beams, roof, doors, windows, floor, and courtyard — has its own role, and the beauty emerges from how these parts are proportioned and joined. A hanok is also a highly repairable system, in which individual wooden members, roof tiles, paper doors, or floor surfaces can be repaired or replaced without dismantling the whole structure.”
Chung Dahyoung ponders:
“Actually, the hanok is a very interesting subject to think about in relation to VOLA. This also connects to the spatial character of the VOLA Korea showroom, which combines a modern house from the 1960s with an old traditional hanok. The way two different architectural periods coexist in one place seemed to naturally connect Danish Modernism, Korean living culture, and the attitude of maintaining and repairing what already exists,” she says.
