Working on a drawing that shows the two sites, Okin and Ichon (Mountain and River). Showing the different  conditions of the city as it moves from natural landscape to artifical contours.

Understanding the elements that make up the river site context. Largely dominated by roads and infrastructure, this site has a tough landscape to work within. How can these 'motifs of estrangement' engender a sense of place and continuity?

Roads, infrastructure

permeable, impermeable boundaries

traffic intensity

defining an edge condition

the textures of the site

A week of Tutorials

I have had many meetings this week with friends and tutors, who gave me lots of important things to consider including potential clients,  the scale of a staircase, to how to capture the character of the settings I am looking at. 

Mike Taylor 15.02.11

Is there anything constant in the site? (A strata) for example infrastructure, left behind after demolition, or is it just the natural features that are constant?

Can you suggest ways of prolonging the structure of the concrete frames? (a support at the rear of building, bracing, relining)

Idea of rituals can be built into how you treat the site and existing buildings, how can you create difference in something that is a repetitive system, create a place that is open to the sun, large span spaces etc vs. more intimate ones?

Can you create a narrative that connects the two apartment sites, the one by the river and one by the mountain? Perhaps inhabitants of one/either have a ritualistic connection to the mountain site?

Imagine the mountain site frozen in time, but when re inhabited it retains some of the spirit of its former occupants. ‘shadows of fittings, like sinks, air conditioners, and what walls you keep’

Peter 14.02.11

On developing a ‘mythological map’ of the two sites:

developing an image charted towards this self-understanding and themes of these ‘towers of privacy’

the world of corridors, lobbies, shopping etc.

The drawing can act as a framework for the intended interventions, by identifying and characterising the different kinds of setting you have identified.

Big map has solid texture, isolate and locate sites within that which can be further described in more detail.

A loose file with layers, that you add to over the year.

Research more about the shamanistic rituals of site and how this relates to modern lifestyle? see Mircea Eliade, ‘The Forge and the Crucible’

Seki Hirano 11.02.11

Could you suggest a strategy or process of how to ‘list’ the elements of the site you think are important like the staircases and the route through the site.  This could be done informally?
This  could be applied to other sites which will get demolished.

Connect these objects with your social agenda.

Demonstrate in drawing how these spaces stairs etc could be used as a social space, or setting for activity?

Look at the Isse shrine in Japan, they are constantly rebuilding it every 5 years, this is common in Asian tradition.

ultimately the only thing worth anything is the land. (this suggests very different attitude to the value of buildings, compared to Europe, where bricks and mortar is worth a lot) Reinforces mentality of what is newer is always better?

Can you describe more about the nature of community and culture in the rest of Seoul? How it relates to apartment life.

Katrina Tutorial 10.02.11

In Europe we have accepted that the high rise living model does not form good social structure/basis for city. In Korea attitude seems very different, these are an accepted way of life. (They are a practical solution to a problem).

Can you identify a potential client for your site? could you imagine a developer?
Or perhaps a housing cooperative (look at housing coop in NW8, Wellington road, London)

Attempt to sketch out the programme, and client, sketch out redraw, rub out etc, drawing over the existing situation.

Find some Mentoring architects?
c18th english picturesque, Repton etc. in the connection to landscape etc comes to mind

Robert Portfolio review 09.02.11

There is a large volume of research in portfolio, an evenness about way it is shown
Scale of conversation relates to scale of Seoul as well as domestic.
Have discovered a new problem to what I originally thought, not something I knew before.
You have insights and sensitivities towards situation, perhaps need more ‘verbs’
stop dithering
multitask and operate at range of scales, test things

Tutorial peter 07.02.11

Looking at what is public from scale of window to that of a room.
The patch city pieces are useful, can develop further.
What do you want to do with the Okin site?
Need to do a drawing that captures the urban gaps, completmented by rural world further up the mountain.
Perhaps a section, through interstitial space, top to bottom and the topographies attached to them.
‘topography of possibilities’
How do you measure landscape as you get higher?
A way of developing continuities?
a substitute urbanism.
A tea house or a way to look at the reflection of the moon?
represent this topography/condition as a story.
Look at chinese SEZ effect drawing, vivid beijing 2012, which work backwards from the image to the plans.
Work up and down the hill?
Ghost in the shell topography?

Paris 17°, Tour Bois le Prêtre - Druot, Lacaton & Vassal

I visited this this 16 storey 96 apartment block built in the 1960's on the Periphery Road in Paris, during its late phases of its renovation. Lacaton and Vassal have transformed the social and material fabric of this relic of post war, high rise housing. This avoids the demolition of the building, as well as proposing a sizeable extenstion to the living spaces.  (For more info:http://www.lacatonvassal.com/index.php?idp=56#)

 

 

 

Renovation in Progress 2011

Raymond Lopez - 1959 from http://www.lacatonvassal.com/index.php?idp=56#

Each floor is extended with a self-supporting steel structure that provides each flat with a winter garden type space, effectively doubling the size of the apartment and allowing views of the city which was limited by the small windows in the existing building.

The extra structure is made from pre-fabricated elements, allowing the residents to stay in their homes during construction works. This prevents the immediate rise in prices and gentrification that would occur if the whole site was redeveloped and residents bought off. 

 

 

 

 

 

"Manhattan in the Alps"

What I think is really beautiful about Seoul is that it is a city that occurred on a site where there cannot really be a city. There isn't really room for a city there. So it's as if the metropolis has been established in the middle of the mountains, a city that has to coexist with mountains and beautiful forests, a kind of "Manhattan in the Alps." … The middle class lives in the flat parts, those who can afford everything and those who can afford nothing live on the hills. And throughout the city are scattered the remnants of this Metabolist project. And I simply like the speed with which it extends

..... Seoul, a city known for its eternal traffic, in the middle of the crisis all of a sudden became this kind of eerie, silent city with no traffic: a city without pollution. And maybe that was when I could finally see that Seoul was a kind of Switzerland, really beautiful.

Rem Koolhaas in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist
http://www.archphoto.it/huo.htm

Slideshow

A slideshow movie made in preparation for writing an essay for 'critical transformations'. It aims to capture the temporal nature of the apatu in Seoul from their introduction in the early 1960s. At first, they were a sign of modernisation, used by the illegitimate military regime as visual proof of their economic agenda for growth. As their footprint repeated over Seoul's marsh land and mountains, they became a symbol of middle class aspiration. Now, the early buildings face demolition, the sites are being 'eroded' by the landscape, a reversal of the process that occurred during their construction.