condenCITY_103 standing in wait

Rare
empty without alteration
out of place it seems without
occupation.

Like a life sealed up and hidden
-and maybe there is truth in that-
in contrast to the exhibitions
next door
down the street
pervasive
as it is everywhere

to open is to become stuck
in a daily exposure of routine.

Seoul is rarely so pure in
face.

condenCITY_102 architecture touching-down

Masonry construction never really seems to be in fashion. As I comb through the latest archives of recognized architectural splendor, most of which glistens with sleek metal-fabricated perforations and glazed uniformity; masonry, on the other hand waits for its moments of recognition. To be reinvented in what seems aesthetically pleasing at any given time. It is constantly being rethought in how it touches-down and binds with earth; how architecture becomes heavy in weight and mass. Its moment to shine so-to-speak will happen again as it cyclically seems to surface from time to time, we know by history. There are notable practitioners- works today- perhaps better left working away under the currents of popular architecture culture. 

I have written of the late Korean modern architect Kim Swoo Guen before. I recently paid visit by chance to a lessor known work of his on the campus of Duksung Women's University in northern Seoul. I had not heard or read of this particular building before- home to the art and architecture department of this small private university. It was designed and constructed in the early 1980's. Sized to accommodate modest combined departments in the creative studio arts and environmental design practices. It's layout defines a common central court. Elevated above the surrounding campus grounds by dimensions of brick masonry, the court rises in unit steps. 

Masonry architecture can be hostage to dimensions fixed by the very nature of the unitized material itself. Freedom to explore and transform happen in how the material is segmented and given pause. How masonry parts ways with the ground, in being lifted as if to reveal an underside passage. How it contrasts with voided spaces or other 'soft' material surfaces. Swoo Guen manages all of this within the college; a balancing act on raised heavy ground, seamless with the very walls that define it. 

Kim Swoo Guen's architecture, as in much of his work, was defined by its very material compositions and notably his creations in brick. 

Architecture can touch.

Mediating between back (and forward)

condenCITY_101 manufactured city 2.0

Seoul's foundations are horizontal in contrast.

Outstretched in courtyard configurations, bound by activity and the passing, progressing city. The neighborhood factories of post war boom are fading- but there are few that remain as patchwork, still stitched in a quilt of worker districts such as Seongsu-dong. They are wrapped and tangled within and guided by the very productions that sustain them. They may disappear in the not so distant coming years, perhaps displaced to remote borders of the cities edge, while some will just disappear. 

Foundations to be covered in vertical sameness. 

condenCITY_100 stick-on city

At surface, the faces of rising eastern capitalist cities are peel and stick: 

Facades quick to arrive and disappear under false hopes and dematerialized dreams. 
Patterns mesmerize in slight deception and upon closer inspection the mask comes off.

What remains solely are shells of anticipation...

and the emptiness of borrowed time.

Remembering Lebbeus Woods

Images courtesy of and sampled from ARCHITECTURE online- public tribute comments.



Rising Waters_ departing lives ---Oct 2012 NYC

Remembering Lebbeus Woods

1940-2012

I first remember meeting Lebbeus Woods in 1995 at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the College of Environmental Design. He had been invited to give a public lecture in Boulder and studio critique for forth year students in the college.  Like a few of my classmates at the time we were impressionably arrested by his gift for making the impossible- in brief, his drawings were mesmerizing and beyond static visions of our world and the architecture we assume daily. His visionary 'Architecture' indeed had boundless possibilities, both in how one speaks of it- as Lebbeus did- and how we render it as conflicting extensions of our tangled world; political, social, poetic, and beyond.

His ungrounded creations captured what it meant to 'make' and for me an essential example I still impart on my students today in lectures that I give. His work was deep, inspiring and cross generational.

"..Maybe I can show what could happen if we lived by a different set of rules.”  LW, New York Times interview, 2008.

His works will continue to cross generations uncharted, well past these lives we have now. 




Other tributes

Steven Holl remembers Lebbeus
bldgblog: Lebbbeus Woods
NY Times tribute

Personal in Public

Recently, 'Public Contact' was staged live in the Posco corporate headquarter lobby in central Seoul. The performance was timed to coincide with the busy noon lunch rush, as office workers poured from the towers above, making their way to the streets outside of the main public lobby of the Posco headquarters. 

As the performance artists write- "the memory of touch" are aptly considered words; curious (and in this setting) perhaps an inappropriate juxtaposition of uncommon closeness within a place of definitive social boundary. The half hour long performance of spontaneous positioning and comings together of man/ woman- posed in comfort and discomfort- played out against the wariness of public eyes. The public space of the lobby is only that at fixed times. The lobby is both public (in classification) and yet wholly under private control. Acts of close human contact remain strangely out of place here.

'Public Contact' was a beautiful reminder of connections (and contrasts) within semi-public corporate places, suggesting that such 'public' urban space carries the weight and burden of expectation. Actions outside of this stand in stark defiance.  Personal in public lives momentarily. 

  

condenCITY_99 manufactured city 1.0

The small alley way streets of Seoul (go-mok-gil) are the support systems for micro-industries, once  randomly dispersed throughout the northern half of the city. Scaled to compact urban conditions, these production networks sustain neighborhoods and working communities. Shops such as the one above are large enough only for the solo-working man, specialized in his or her daily routines (like the sign maker pictured here). His shop, in tern, connects to the plastics distributor- with links to the paint specialist, delivery man on motor bike and so on; a web of light industries production preserving a microcosm of connectivity, activity and ultimately compact urban forms. A city in my mind has never seemed so small. 

Boundaries between daily life and production are intertwined at street side shops facing passers-by.  Distinctions between zoned places here and there remain overlooked.  

Industry as the foundation of Seoul. 

condenCITY_98 speculation ruin

Back in late 2001, I would gaze out my apartment window and wonder when this building, seemingly at a momentary standstill, would be completed. Since that time years back, having left and returned to Seoul to live in the same place- this building still stands frozen, as it has for more than a decade. Paralyzed in speculative debate amongst landowners in one of the wealthiest districts in the city.  

Standing testament to indifferent government policies- at least with respect to the urban public condition- one must wonder how it is possible for such inactivity to remain in a location of desire? Where is the neighborhood outrage and call for action condemning this place? How could owners of private property be allowed to maintain such a decrepit stance with back turned? 

The ruinous demise has unfolded in a front of tatters, shocking as it is the city remains quiet spectator- or so it seems.  Seocho- tied in speculation ruin. 

condenCITY_97 time

Space is collapsed and expanded in cyclical rhythm. 

Repeating daily in a precise, machine like cadence. 

Seoul breaths in and out, exposed at the seams. Where at once memories were made, they become irrelevant daily, covered under the weight of a morning car park. Tables, chairs, conversation are at the center of darkening evening skies; if only for a  brief moment in reoccurring time.