The "100-year Masterplan" exhibition at the 2023 Seoul Biennale of Architecture & Urbanism sought to generate visionary ideas for Seoul in the next 100 years to form a blueprint for the city’s development and long-term planning. Although Seoul was founded in the past century with respect to its landscape and natural environments, the city has been built and shaped by development-oriented urbanization in its recent history. Recognizing this evolutionary symbiosis between the built and the natural, the exhibition asks how Seoul can be reconnected to its unique geographical and ecological veins in the form of mountains, valleys, waterways, and wind roads.​​ The exhibition hopes to establish the common values and principles that Seoul should pursue in the next 100 years, shaping the future of not only the city but also of cities around the world.
 

Responding to this thematic prompt, our selected winning proposal Productive Han-Ga-Ram reimagines the Han River as Seoul’s central public space by transforming its thirty bridges and its riverfronts into a collective green network as a productive and performative public infrastructure. In its history, despite it's central geography to the city's development, the Han River has been perceived more as a backdrop and an obstacle to cross. As the river lost its function as a waterway for trade, parts of its riverfronts were channelized and its edges developed into wide expressways that further cut off Seoul’s citizens from the waterfront. Green leisure spaces with modern water management were introduced along the Han river since late 1980s, but they largely remain hard-edged and disconnected from each other. We propose to reimagine the Han River as a green network that revitalizes and reconnects its bridges and their associated riverfronts. Our blueprint illustrates how Seoul’s north and south mountains can be reconnected to the river and vice versa, by reshaping their relationship though a series of flood-mitigating green infrastructure and soft edges. Integrated with new recreational pedestrian-oriented public uses, the Han River is conceived of as a new 'madang' (frontyard) for culture and ecology that provide opportunities for the public to participate in the urban and ecological 'courtyard' of the city. On an infrastructural scale, the network of bridges that criss-cross the river will be adaptively retrofitted with multi-performative social and ecological functions that address the impacts of the changing climate and water crisis. Productive Han-Ga-Ram proactively connects the people of Seoul to its immediate mountains and waters, reconnecting its citizens to its fluvial edge and generating a new collective identity for the city. The proposal seeks to amplify Han River’s ecological potential to trigger a series of sociopolitical transformations for Seoul’s next 100 years.

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Displayed from 9/1/23 to 10/29/23 as part of the "100-year Masterplan" exhibition for the 2023 Seoul Biennale of Architecture & Urbanism, at the Seoul Citizens Hall venue in Seoul, South Korea.