Seoul Urban Design Int’l Competition, 2nd Prize(without 1st Prize) I 2013
Seoul_Urban_Design_Competition
Hyper Landscape
Urban integration: Recovering interdependency among urban elements
New set of urban activities on Jemulpo-road Park are not designed in an arbitrary way, but will be determined following to the geographical features of the site. This project proposes waterway as a generator of new urban activities and urbanity for the sustainable, resilient future of the site.
As shown on the old map of Seoul, Jemulpo-road and adjacent area was the main floodplain of the region, which is connected to numerous sub-streams. This feature of the site give us a concrete idea on its future: a landscape of stream, agency of urban integration.
The major infrastructure of the Jemulpo-road Park is not inside the park, but connected to the city: sub streams that are collected on the site. Based on that, new activities on Jemulporoad Park can be actively changed as a response to the environment – amount of precipitation, sun light, and temperature,
while physically integrating isolated urban fabrics. In addition, it can be a good solution to chronic flooding of the region, as increased green field and retention pool can serve the function of urban reservoir. Also, collected water flows to the Anyangstream by using natural slope, together with the aqueduct attached to the underground tunnel.
As on the old map of Seoul, 1918, the site is featured by its mountainous topography and numerous streams. In as-found condition of the site, all the urban elements (topography, waterway, road, and urbanity) were strongly bounded together by maintaining interdependency among each other: a model of integrated city. Afterwards, however, development of appropriate urban form responding to this unique history was not made. Yet, seemingly haphazard planned city, current urban fabric of the site is clearly divided by its topography and previous waterway. This project finds opportunity of creating future vision of the city from the such accumulated physical and metaphysical history of the site, and creates hyper landscape by string such features together in a successive way as below:
1) Rediscover and reconnect hidden waterways to the site (Jemulpo-road) 2) Create park and amenities based on waterway. It also functions as a reservoir which prevent chronic flooding of the site 3) Induce successive restructuring of the urban fabric according to the reconnected waterway 4) Consolidates strong interdependency among urban elements and create new urbanity: Hyper Landscape.