Gallery gets Seoul citizens to rethink urban spaces

Seoul Hall of Urbanism and Architecture / Courtesy of Lee Hyun-jun via Seoul Hall of Urbanism and Architecture

Seoul Hall of Urbanism and Architecture to be central venue of 2019 Seoul Biennale

By Lee Suh-yoon

Seoul, a city that hosts one-fifth of the country's population, now has an exhibition hall dedicated to generating public discussion on urban landscapes and architecture.

Located just across the street from City Hall, the Seoul Hall of Urbanism and Architecture tracks the city's changes through time with each descending floor.

The main exhibition on the first basement floor highlights one of the most overlooked parts of the city's past ― the mass displacement of evicted residents to the city's outer rim in the 1970s and 1980s.

These outskirt settlements ― mostly now demolished by a more recent wave of redevelopment ― come to life with miniature neighborhood models, walk-through video footage and a life-size copy of the small clapboard homes that residents lived in.

Side view image of Seoul Hall of Urbanism and Architecture / Courtesy of Terminal 7 Architects via Seoul Metropolitan Government

One floor below, data sets representing the city's urban infrastructure flash on and off on a 3D map, showing how different types of urban spaces ― schools, parks and parking lots ― are distributed throughout the capital today. Next to it, a series of flash cards offer their own graphic representation of the city's dense urban structure. According to one, the population density of Seoul rivals that of Manhattan in New York ― around 26,000 persons per square kilometer.

The bottom floor progresses further along the temporal theme to explore the future model of cities and the social role architecture can play in them. Until recently, the main hall displayed a public housing model that was successful in Vienna. A side exhibit ― still running ― explores how architecture can help human societies cope with natural disasters, citing the examples of the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan's east coast.

A miniature 3D model of an evictee settlement formed at Geoyeo-dong, the southeastern tip of Seoul, is on display at Seoul Hall of Urbanism and Architecture. / Korea Times photo by Lee Suh-yoon

The city's main waterways appear on a miniature 3D map of Seoul at the exhibition hall. The map visualizes important urban infrastructure by category. / Korea Times photo by Lee Suh-yoon

Jeong Hyon-su, architect and department manager at the city-run exhibition hall, hopes the gallery will get people asking necessary questions about how to plan urban spaces.

"A city can only improve when people understand the impact of urban planning and architecture, asking questions about where they live and what kind of space they want to live in," Jeong said in an interview at the gallery on Tuesday. "In some European nations, urban architecture and their social impact ― like why parking lots have to be built at the entrance of a village ― are taught from elementary school. For most Koreans, however, it's simply perceived in the context of real estate ― constructing apartments for economic profit."

Being familiar with the city's changes over the years and their sociopolitical issues will give people justifiable standards for discussing its future, Jeong said.

"You have to know these things to say 'we should preserve this' or 'this was a good fix,'" the manager said. "I hope this place becomes a platform for such reflection."

The design of the exhibition hall building itself minimizes negative social impact. Unlike most high rises and apartment complexes in Seoul, the exhibition hall does not wall off the occupied space from the surrounding urban landscape. Three of its four floors are underground, offering an unblocked view of the Seoul Anglican Cathedral behind. The second basement floor is connected by a tunnel to City Hall, while its rooftop plaza, called Seoul Maru (meaning "living room" in Korean), slopes gradually into the surrounding pavement, making the open-air space easily accessible by foot.

Seoul Hall of Urbanism and Architecture opened in March as part of a city-led project to upgrade cultural or historic sites along Sejong Street from Gwanghwamun Square to Deoksu Palace. The gallery replaced a 1937 colonial era post office that had been used as the National Tax Service branch office since 1978. Before the Japanese came, the site hosted Deokangung, a shrine that held the ancestral tablets of King Gojong's concubine.

Citizens enjoy a live performance at Seoul Maru, a rooftop plaza above Seoul Hall of Urbanism and Architecture, Tuesday. / Korea Times photo by Lee Suh-yoon

When the building was first designed, there was no clear idea what kind of cultural content would be displayed in its exhibition hall. Following the 2017 Seoul Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism, the city designated it as the city's first museum of urban geography and architecture, making it an apt site to host some of the exhibitions in the upcoming Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism starting this September.

Poster for the 2019 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism "Collective City" / Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government

Starting August, the current collection will be set aside to make room for the World Cities Exhibition at the biennale, showcasing the concept of "cities as a collective consequence" of different factors with examples from 80 participating cities.

"To understand the city, one needs to understand this contradictory nature and to recognize and frame it as a physical and political construct complicit in the right to housing, access to natural and social resources, transportation, political freedom and justice while simultaneously pressured by the challenges of internal and global migration, climate change and increasing inequity," the biennale co-directors Lim Jae-yong and Francisco Sanin said about this year's theme in a written introduction.

One highlight of this exhibition will be the "Pyongyang Room," which switches back and forth between everyday images of Seoul and Pyongyang to create "a sense of connection and homogeneity" between North and South Korea.

Other venues for this year's biennale include Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Donuimun Museum Village, Sewoon Electronics Plaza and Seoul Museum of History.