condencity_43 urban memory




The highest topographical elevation on the Konkuk University campus in Seoul is punctuated with an oddly curious building, projecting an aesthetic and form caught somewhere between Corbusian modern and Eastern Block socialist architecture of the 1960's. The designing Korean architect in fact had studied briefly under Le Corbusier and was undoubtedly influenced in the outcome of what stands today. The building functions now as the campus' foreign language institute but in the recent past served as the school's main library. 

It's exterior white-washed walls have recorded seasonal time with weathered streaks and accumulated dust. The interior, while dated opposite outside, has recently undergone a fresh coat of refurbishment. Painted corridors and newly tiled floors attempt to conceal time. As I moved around the central, spiraling corridor I can't help but remember the long extended corridors of the communist panel-laks of Eastern Europe. Clouded windows, with the collected haze of season's and lives past to my right, mysteriously concealed, oblique spaces to my left; urban memory and the making of myths. 



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