1930's Seoul_ projecting forward

The Hankok is a centuries old tradition of residential typology here in Korea. It's urban form in Seoul proliferated the city beginning in the early 20th century. It evolved from it's rural roots, providing a kind of suburban neighborhood to Seoulites until the multi-story apartment began to appear in the early 1960's. As a sustainable residential type it has evolved today  as primarily an aesthetic and social icon, disappearing as a once functional neighborhood unit. 

Today, while several districts of the Hanok remain, the transformation of social and physical realities are starkly real and these once vibrant places stand as quiet glimpses of the past. Dwellings are rapidly converted to commercial interest and the remaining residences stand empty as owners choose to live elsewhere with modern comforts and conveniences. Economics have further eroded communities and populations have sold in interest of profits or have been forced to leave due to rising values. What remains is a kind of frozen urban museum; raising questions of the future of a regionally timeless way of building.

Condencity_31 market transformation

Bangkok's markets transform the city day and night. When one pack's up for the day the next one (in some other remote district) is being erected for the night. It is a continuous cycle that momentarily changes the face of the city from district to district and from night to day. Populations and crowds shift from one area to the next in a kind of ebb and flow of urban activity.

Condencity_30 urban ruin

I recently returned from Bangkok. It had been six years since I had visited the steamy tropic metropolis. It is interesting to see how cities such as Bangkok are progress and digress all at once. This could be the case for any city certainly but Bangkok's continuous (and evolving) ruin appears to constantly challenge progress.

Climate and stagnating capital contribute to crumbling pockets in the city center. Heat, moisture, rampant vegetation and pollution cloak these ruins in an accelerated entropic state. Side by side stand ruin and new. The city moves about blindly, oblivious to the beauty of ruin.

YTN Competition

In collaboration with hAND architects in Seoul, we recently completed an international competition for a cable news broadcasting studio and headquarters. The project was an in-depth investigation of new technologies (construction and digital) coupled with natural processes. Our final proposal challenged typical high rise construction by carving out the core of the building allowing light and air to penetrate the entirety of the mass. What is commonly circulation and mechanical service becomes a common public area within the structure. Large voids open to the west and south directing views and light in dialogue with the urban context ('DMC') designated as the new digital media center of Seoul.

Julius Shulman 1910-2009

Images courtesy the LA Observer

This week marked the passing of a truly fascinating man. His early photographs (and those throughout his career) sparked a movement of modern proportions. Images which continue to be burned in our minds eye, representing what modernism means in Southern California and beyond.

I had to write of Mr. Shulman today because as a student I had the great chance to meet him in his Laurel Canyon home and studio. He opened his doors to our class and shared his passion for teaching and architectural photography. At the time of our visit Mr. Shulman was about 90 years old however, his youthful approach to 'work' and life rendered his age irrelevant. His memory will live on through his archive of thousands of inspiring images and the lives he touched through education and beyond.

sa2009 Summer Workshop

Seoul Architects (sa) is once again sponsoring a summer workshop here in the city for students of Architecture. This summer's theme is 'collaboration with nature'. Currently we anticipate over one hundred students from Korea, Japan and China to attend. There will be about 30 tutors conducting the workshop. The summer program is in it's twelfth year (this being my first as a tutor).

Collaboration with nature intends to promote further dialogue of how we as designer's (from an eastern perspective) can continue to explore methods for sustainability in the built environment. My class section will be examining the traditional Hanok (Korean traditional house) as a precedent for designing in today's culture. Students will investigate and document ways in which the Hanok is sustainable and apply these early models to a new form of residential design.

http://collaborationwithnature.org/

Condencity_29 temporary permanence

Street side vendors in their mobile carts and structures have taken up permanent residence in many parts of the city. In some locations these vendors are situated face to face with ‘permanent’ commercial storefronts in designated commercial buildings. It is an interesting dialogue of two opposing conditions; one of supposed temporality and the other of stable fixture along the street front. Competing for customers as they face off, somehow each side manages to thrive.

As night falls the activities and bustle of such commercial zones come to life. In one such area I frequent here near Konkuk University the sidewalk experience fills with students, shoppers and those grabbing a quick bite to eat at any one of the street side vendors. The rush of bodies squeezes the sidewalk to a narrow passing lane. Negotiations along a cyclical path passing change from day to night. I look down to witness deflated vendor cart wheels and a grime crusted sidewalk at the underside of the food vendor cart; conditions suggesting a long term temporality. The street vendors have been and will be here for some time to come, competing in unison with the permanent city.

Architecture Education: Konkuk University

site_body_synthesis was the theme for our graduate level architecture studio this spring semester. The students were challenged to think beyond form making in formulating a basis for a project. We are often forced to reconcile challenging information in establishing the framework for a project. The premise of the studio established a sequential structure for doing just that.

The studio began as an intensive investigation of a complex urban site in Seoul, combined with a selected apparatus representing each individual students perspective of site and the relationship of (apparatus) body to it. The students then synthesized these studies and ideas into a proposal for a fitness club suitable to the contextual establishment of similar commercial interests. The outcome, by nature of the semester long investigation, challenged the status-quo of typical fitness clubs currently existing in this complex part of the city.

Condencity_28 hangang

The Han River (Hangang) in Seoul has through history had a profound impact on the city. For decades, like many other industrialized urban centers, the river boundary has been a source of sustenance and obstacle. In recent years the city has once again reinvested in a renewed waterfront after years of industrial neglect. The challenges of opening the rivers edge to public accessibility is a major undertaking as much of the river is now bound on both sides by primary freeways.

Yesterday I participated in a design review with my colleague Marc Brossa at Konkuk University in Seoul. His Graduate level design class spent the semester investigating the Han River. The premise of the studio was an interpretation of possible scenarios to rethink positions in urban, landscape and architectural design by creating comprehensive solutions to riverfront habitation and experience. The interesting thing regarding the studio was the genuine position of combined disciplines in urban planning (considered with landscape and architectural design) . Natural systems are integral in many aspects of what we do as designers in the built environment and rather than make disciplinary distinctions the discourse becomes inherently unified in approach. Furthermore, the foundation for the studio challenged students to consider more complex relationships with regard to starkly juxtaposed natural and built environments along the rivers edge.

While the projects seemed only to scratch the surface of design potential, the dialogue of ideas was rich with possibility and interest. One student project considered freeway infrastructure and a proposition to excavate beneath it to create a regenerated wetland and extended 'natural' edge. The notion of utilizing the existing transportation infrastructure and allowing it to function beyond its intended purpose (in this case a flood and water release control 'gate') represented the intentions of the initial studio idea.

Some of the work can be viewed at NETWORK + PROCESSES

Condencity_27 threshold

Low rise commercial buildings in Seoul give new meaning to the term 'mixed-use'. Any number of various programs fill small buildings (often 3-4 floors in height avoiding the requirements of elevator service) in the cities densely packed commercial zones. Many of the stores and shops on the upper floors are accessed through a single entry corridor and stair which, in many cases is continuously open to the street.

While these buildings are clearly private places corridor extensions of the public sidewalk create a gray zone not fully private and not totally public. These unconditioned spaces take on an urban appearance becoming caked and coated with the qualities and scars of sidewalk life. They present an interesting argument for an all together publicly accessible city intertwined within privatized constructs.