condenCITY_74 From roads to rivers

Image courtesy open source for public use: daum.net

As the rain continues to fall this day, July 28, 2011 the deluge of the last two days has left my home district of Seocho-gu underwater literally. What has officially been classified as a 100 year flooding event on the south side of the city is still unfolding in terms of an urban disaster. Homes washed out as mountainsides have eroded and motorists stranded on the roofs of their vehicles in 1.5m+ deep water, the rains caught many by surprise in the early morning hours on the 27th. With downpours falling in amounts as much as 2.3 inches (6 cm)/ hour it is no surprise that Seoul's drainage systems have been helpless against the torrential summer monsoon.

  

Cy Twombly [April 25, 1928 – July 5, 2011] making histories

Coincidentally, it was last week I was posting a note regarding the memory of a great painter I once studied with.  In fact we had great discussions about the man I write of here now. About the same time on July 5th 2011, although I did not know it then, another American painter had just passed away. Cy Twombly wasn't just another painter. I was introduced to his work about 12 years ago as a student. At the time I was challenged by a suggested reference to his work and my budding interests. After some time in 2004, I wrote an article for Loudpaper Zine attempting to draw connections between the fragmented city of Seoul (in its palimpsestial formation) and Twombly's paintings of historical reflectance. 

Today, it is clearer to me as I have contemplated time and again, Twombly's work and the creative processes one ventures into as artist, architect, designer, or creator at will. It has been said that Cy Twombly would paint and draw in light subdued spaces to achieve the loose 'freehand' he was so recognized and known for. It was his "experience" as he once described, when it came to making art that appears form and idea consuming. We are in effect left with the process and depth of making and the significant exposure in that. 

Experience of making above all else, perhaps.  

With each passing, a history is made. Cy Twombly was a master, even during his life, of making histories.

Sussman remembered

'invisible'- e.reeder 2001

"I always use the analogy of a pool that has frozen over," in the words of Wendy Sussman "The finished painting is like that. So, in the pool at the lower depth might be a rock, and then there might be a little leaf that is frozen closer to the surface, and above that maybe a candy wrapper. It's all frozen in the pool, and then on the very top somebody comes and skates. The surface has this history, and that is time, the time of the painting."

More on Sussman here, in her words. 

condenCITY_73 heavy Seoul

My Seoul is heavy. Weighted with materials that connect to earth, the surfaces of the city, and bend precariously to the sky reaching. The architectural forms of Seoul are one with the ground, by the very nature of gravity that pulls at dense material compositions common in many structures throughout the city. There is ambiguity between ground and vertical surface. Where one begins and the other ends is at times unclear. 

condenCITY_72 material Seoul

The Leeum Museum revisited. 

Eclectic Seoul emerges in my return visit (after 4 years) to the Samsung Leeum Museum. Seoul as a city recognizable in its fragmented condition, in refined contrast, the Leeum Museum balances the art of its 'architectures' (designed by Jean Nouvel, Rem Koolhaas, and Mario Botta) and the traditional to contemporary arts contained within. The tightly arranged "campus" of buildings is tucked away in the upscale Hannam-dong residential neighborhood, buried within Seoul's north of the river district. It's material (and formal) presence is precisely Seoul, divergent and un-coreographed yet, somehow for its ambitions, remains contextual within the equally ambitious neighboring villas. 

condenCITY_71 mobile streets

Seoul streets rumble under my feet. 

The hum and buzz of motion; metal to metal, propelled through blackened tunnels where walls remain obscure and only glass reflections reveal an internalized compartment, stern faces. Starting and stopping requires loose legs, allowing for a kind of dampened reaction to the jerky motion of pinned cars. This is a street to be sure with beggars and paddlers daily. The actors remain silent, although I know they too are there, seated quietly waiting in turn for their moments to shine. Gawkers sit on the side-lines watching and chatting quietly. Personal space in these streets is non-existent. I remain flexible to the possibility and definition of 'street', my morning street, deep in the city. 

condenCITY_70 city of shadows 2.0

What scale is your life?

Defined by walls that bound your routines of passage and pause. The marks, textures and distances revealing 'scales' here today for a moments notice.

Mullae citydouble doublecity

condenCITY_69 floating seoul

Aerial plan illustration courtesy of exinteriordesign.com

It appears the city of Seoul has long had a fascination with "floating" structures along and in the Han River, as the opening of a photo exhibition last week suggests. The newly completed 'floating-islands' project is home to an exhibition, and the 'floating architecture' itself, a long anticipated addition to the cities waterfront in Banpo-dong. Floating or not, upon visiting on the second day of opening, I couldn't help but feel how oddly out of place the buoyed structures appeared- scaled more for the urban eclecticism of Seoul's urban fabric. But even there, the 'architecture' would appear pompous in a display of formalism; over-structured and under self-critical in what was architecturally designed. 

Looking back to the 1950's, the waterfront at that time was also doted with floating structures attracting visitors for leisure activities. Then, the yet-to-be tamed Han river was still in it's un-engineered state. With edges soft in vegetation and earth, unlike today's dredged and concrete lined artificial corridor. Yet, the floating structures in the black and white exhibition photos appear reflective of the small boat crafts of the river then- simple wooden fabrications for temporary, seasonal occupations. Perhaps as a reminder of the way river and city co-existed at that time. Today, city dominates river, as the new 'floating island' suggest, regardless of how much the local government wants to claim Han River 'Renaissance'.

  

condenCITY_68 end of a life

Dressed in time with splintering cracks, the aging low-rise apartments of guro-gu have outlived expectations. Today, more than 30 years old, the apartments slated for redevelopment now await termination. Lives of yesterday have moved on to the cities newer residential areas, leaving behind the foundations of Seoul; as a city of beige bedrooms.