Output details

‘Designing a new city’ - Seamangeum Island City, Korea, and

‘Designing according to one’s own lived experience’ - Seamangeum Island City, Korea, Florian Beigel, Architecture Research Unit, London, La Biennale di Venezia 2010.

ARU was commissioned to propose a new city, for tourism, service industries and international investment on land reclaimed from the coast of Korea. It was selected as one of three winning proposals to be presented the Korean President.

Kazuyo Sejima invited Beigel to exhibit at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni to make “a 1:1 scale experience of the architecture”. She was interested because this city proposal was designed according to lived experience of existing cities (such as Venice). People can walk from one shoreline of an island to the opposite one in approx. 20 minutes – you cannot forget you are on an island.

The proposal builds on ARU’s urban design principles pioneered since 1992. A ‘landscape infrastructure’ of islands responds to existing lakebed topography & cultural history, anticipating future developments in economy and lifestyle. ‘City Structures’ - urban block and public space typologies selected from cities internationally - were studied, adapted and arranged onto these islands.

Presenting a large urban design proposal in a public exhibition, ARU built a laser cut model, 4 x 5 meters. A plan was printed on Korean rice paper and laid flat on a table. To demonstrate the close connections between culture and the landscape, a large framed photograph by the Korean photographer Kang Woon Gu was hung high on a wall covered with traditional rice wallpaper.

This is an adaptable non-zoned city fabric. Coexistence of functions is an important aspect of a sustainability promoting urban vitality and avoiding daily commuter transport. These principles are prototypical for many urban development sites internationally.

The exhibition in Venice gave people an impression of the Korean landscape and culture, and a spatial experience of the proposed city.

Florian Beigel was Design Director of a multi-disciplinary team with ARU, and:

Prof. Hussain, Dr. Tonkiss (LSE); Davis Langdon, Seah Korea Cost Consultants;

Jonathan Cook & Hydrologist Dr. Qingwei Ma Environment Consultants;

Prof. Dr. H. Mueller, University of Dortmund, Coordinator of an international Renewable Energies Network.

The Seamangeum Island City urban design research project is a double weighted research output with the international exhibition of elements of this project shown at the Biennale di Venezia 2010. The Venice exhibition is a research work in itself. A large urban model and large printed plan were made specially for the exhibition by ARU as a way of bringing the research closer to full scale reality.