Calvino's Seoul

"Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else."


-Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

condenCITY_61 city-double : double-city

Mullae dong in Seoul has become an artists enclave over the past decade. To begin THIS decade we examine two communities in Mullae, having become a double entity, side-by-side;  the industry and artist communities of Seoul.

Mullae-dong in Yeongdongpo-gu is one of the few remaining industrial areas within the center of the city.  At the first half of the 20th century, industry took root in Seoul with modernization and production needs (during the Colonial period) and population induced, extended city limits. Today, industry has been pushed to outer city limits with speculative rezoning, leaving vacancies and voids in the industrial city-scape. By 1999, displaced artists of the Hongik area began to take over the vacant spaces of Mullae-dong, occupying the upper levels of what were once industrial offices and work spaces within non-descript, concrete slab structures. A loosely formed community began to emerge and what has now been collectively realized as Mullae Artists Village. 


Now, with the last remaining metal and machine shops at street level, both artists and artisans have established a mutually beneficial common ground. A blossoming 'double' which may even overcome short sided speculations to redevelop this culturally significant area.  

  

condenCITY_60 public discourse

The year (and decade) ended with two public exhibitions of intensions well beyond personal and group recognition. The intense need to bring architecture to the forefront of social/ political awareness and debate was impetus enough for our semester long investigation and final exhibitions. 'Transit_ house', considering the plight of North Korean refugees and the  need for  an accessible housing type, in the very least was an attempt to plant seeds for dialogue and contemplation. Although met with modest reception the ideas will extend beyond studio and gallery. 

Structures of Propaganda

Tis the season for propaganda. 

A large Christmas tree has been fashioned of lights, wrapping a communications tower bordering the DMZ in South Korea. The tower, standing 30 meters high, is supposedly viewable by villagers and military posts on the north side of the DMZ border.  It has been reported the 'tree'  alters perceptions of North Korean residents to recognize fallacies of the North Korean government, who for years have been telling its citizens that they are far better off than the people of South Korea. The bright light display of the tree is meant to challenge this idea amidst long periods of blackout and limited electricity availability in the North...so the story in the media goes or is it a Christian church thing? It certainly wouldn't be the first time for such propaganda.

Transit_ house Seoul

Opening tomorrow, the 20th of December at Prugio Valley gallery in Gangnam ]Seoul[ is an exhibition of ideas for housing Seoul's next wave of refugees from North Korea. This semester our design studio has been researching the plighted situation of North Korean's seeking freedoms here in the south. Our group will be exhibiting ideas for new housing types and strategies, surprisingly a muted topic amongst design professionals in South Korea.

The exhibition will run through the 24th of December. 

condenCITY_59 inhabiting the gap

Seongbuk-gu in Seoul extends outside the northern most ancient city walls. It is an amalgamation of old and new with preservation and conversion of 1930's urban Hanok's (traditional Korean houses) alongside new villas and non-descipt commercial storefronts that can be found throughout Seoul. Galleries, museums and creatively inspired businesses dot the cityscape here. 

As in many of Seoul's older districts there is a willingness to inhabit the uninhabitable- or so it would seem. Drainage-way turned neighborhood with residences and small cafes filling what appears to be a once natural water way. Recent summer and early fall monsoons brought drenching deluges to the region this year and one must wonder the ability of such unplanned areas to withstand the tendencies of water to flow to the lowest geographical point. Somehow drainage whether sufficient or not  has been mitigated allowing the occupation of this urban gap.

   

condenCITY_58 lines and curves

Rational expressions and organizations, at least in a coherent sense,  as experienced momentarily in Seoul. New commerce rises out of formless city streets. Lines (and the occasional curve) replace the non linear city. While Gangnam can hardly be considered historic by any stretch of the imagination, its roots and side streets retain characteristics of Seoul's urban past. With each new high-rise tower these woven traits of unplanned urbanity slip away. 

Seoul has become linear. 

condenCITY_57 seoul adaptations 1.2

mobile garments_ Seocho-dong 


......[or anywhere]

condenCITY_56 city of refugee

Seoul has been a city of refugee for decades. It's massive growth through the mid-twentieth century was fueled by rural migrations and immigration from abroad. People seeking new opportunity and promotion flocked to the city. Today, Seoul faces a new population of refugees hoping to find political, idealogical and economic freedoms. Ironically, this marginalized population of defecting North Koreans, is given relatively little assistance when faced with issues of housing equality and option. 

This semester, graduate students at Konkuk University will be researching and designing 'transitional' refugee housing for North Korean defectors, to be sited in a quickly changing district within Seoul city boundaries.  A silenced topic (one rarely discussed amongst local design professionals and government collaboration) will be placed at the forefront of discourse with an end of the semester exhibition  of works to be held at Prugio Gallery in Seoul.

  

condenCITY_55 above

Daum.net aerial view of Ttueksom station in Seoul

Dymaxion Map, Buckminster Fuller, Courtesy wikimedia commons

Now, more than ever, we have access to a myriad of options for viewing the city. Cartography, or the craft of map-making has for centuries been a search for representing the earths surface and its composition in two dimensional form. Maps as two dimensional representations have given way to digitized volumes of aerial shots and three dimensionally charted land/ building forms, capturing nearly every corner of our urban (and rural) environments. It seems impossible that the two dimensional map, be it analogue or digital, will disappear anytime soon. The ability to view the city or any arrangement on the earths surface from various vantage points in nearly live time, has been augmented with combined technologies for unprecedented realism in viewing the composition of the earths surface from above.    

By comparison, the Dymaxion map, patented by Buckminster Fuller in 1946, was a projection of a world map onto the surface of a polyhedron. The ensuing pattern was then unfolded using various methods and flattened to form a two-dimensional map which, in the end retained much of the proportional integrity of the globe map. While it may seem easy to dismiss the accuracy of the Dymaxion map at first glance, when in fact it is the deception of our minds eye that challenges relationships of the continents we have come to recognize in a northerly upward orientation, form and arrangement. The polyhedron superimposed grid establishing accurate break points, while maintaining continental precision. 

So too, is the current aerial deceptive in its momentary, time captured snapshot of the city. Here today, and as is the case in Seoul, altered city tomorrow. Perhaps in the near future technology will have bridged the gap between transforming cities/ land forms and the digitized lenses through which we view them.