Architectural Design Portfolio
2024 Fall
Graduate Architectural Design Studio (Urban)
Tutor : Christian Schweitzer
KeywordsSustainable Urbanism, Social Sustainability,
Urban Regeneration and Renewal
Location
Small town in Donam-dong, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul
Program
Multifunctional facilities
Assignment 1
Analysis of the existing building stock and the adjunct areas. Development of re-use strategies.
Assignment 2
Background research on sustainable urban regeneration and social housing
Assignment 3
Development of prototype urbanistic solutions to overcome the current deficits. Densification strategies, reuse and extension strategies, green space strategies, traffic solutions, etc.
“The most destructive thing is to demolish a building.”
- Nicholas Grimshaw
“I have learned from my mistakes, and I am sure I can repeat them exactly.”
- Peter Cook
Redevelopment in Korea means to bulldoze existing grown urban structures and create a new ad-hoc city by master-plan planning. In order to build as high as possible and as quickly as possible, the existing environment is ignored, and dense high-rise apartment buildings form a dystopian urban concrete and asphalt landscape. In the process, neighborhood-ness and locality are lost, and residents are deprived of the place they have lived their whole life. A large number of new residents move in, and a new neighborhood is created although the location remains the same. Yet this time they move into an investment, not into a home, already aware they will move again to the next investment in a short period of time. Thereby the city is formed without a context in an instant, rather than developing and maintaining an identity by accumulation of time and experience. This accelerated the notion of a non-place, the investment object that is just passed through in contrast to the notion of ‘home’, place, and identity.
As a prototype site, we will look at a daldongnae in Donam-dong, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul. A redevelopment attempt failed in 2010 because of the extensive costs for apartment buildings on the steep site. Since then the area is decaying more and more. 20% of the buildings are collapsed or removed, another 20% are empty. New building permissions are not granted due to the lack of car access. A redevelopment approach like in the Baeksa Village would fail due to the costs. Nobody knows what to do with this area.
We will analyze the existing building stock to develop criteria for their potential re-use and incorporation into e new urbanistic concept for the area. Further we will look at current examples of sustainable urban regeneration and social housing as well as the state of knowledge on how to counter urban heating and CO2 emissions in construction.