A Taxonomy of the Real: Seoul

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between the actual (what happens) and the real (what is meaningful) about the contemporary city. The argument focuses on Seoul, the capital of South Korea, as an example of a modern metropolis designed by agents of capitalism rather than architects or planners. The resulting dynamic collage can be best defined as an unsolicited urban condition, steering away from typical models seeking to regulate and impose order, and towards an adaptive urban fabric in constant transition. At the heart of Seoul’s DNA is the absence of grids. Unlike its neighbouring capitals – Beijing and Tokyo – Seoul is a capital whose urban fabric developed in direct symbiosis with its topography, resulting in urban fragments in a state of flux becoming the very marrow of urban life where apparently incongruous elements collide to generate new reciprocities of precarious coexistence.

Keywords:

• Seoul
• Seoul churches
• urban tattoos
• Seoul apartments
• background city
• adaptive urban conditions
• urban typologies
• mutating urban landscapes

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by two Seoul National University grants under the titles: “Seoulscape” 2010 and “Seoultime” 2012. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of Heeyoung Pyun and Shin Byonggon who worked as research assistants on the project between 2013 and 2014.

Notes

¹ David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity (Los Angeles: Tarcher, 2006), 33.

² Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (London: Penguin, 1997), 15.

³ Kwang-Joong Kim, Seoul, 20th Century: Growth & Change of the Last 100 Years (Seoul: Seoul Development Institute, 2003).

⁴ Just as in Peter Weir’s 1998 satirical drama, when Jim Carrey (the film's unsuspecting star) realizes his daily reality in no other than a reality TV program, Seoul's apartment conceal a disturbing tranquility of control.

⁵ Vertical City is a project designed by German architect Ludwig Karl Hilberseimer in 1924, and first published in Großstadt Architektur in 1927. The project, designed within the context of socialist ideals of the 1920s, proposed a radical break from horizontal zoning of the period towards a new paradigm of High-rise City.

⁶ Bongryol Kim, The Secret Spirit of Korean Architecture (London: Saffron Books, 2005).

⁷ Michel de Certeau, “Practices of Space,” in On Signs, ed. M. Blonsky (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985).

⁸ Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984).

⁹ John Szarkowski, William Eggleston’s Guide (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002).

¹⁰ Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (London: Penguin, 2002).

¹¹ Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias,” trans. Jay Miskowiec in Architecture / Mouvement / Continuité 5 (October 1984): 1-9.