In the design proposal for the Asian Culture Complex, UnSangDong Architects + Kim Woo II constitutes a stage that acts as a new container for the culture and everyday events. If the new stage for the city is creating an empty open space out of penetrations pathways and plazas, making the new ‘city stage’ is the same as to conduct an enormous mapping operation with penetrating programs and landscape. They propose the Asian Culture Complex as the earth in between creation and disappearance. The earth that is transformed into fragmented pieces and become urban landscape filled with memories of the site and historical evolution of various spectrums of relationships. More images and architects’ description after the break.
We provide a culture canvas that can be filled in by the citizens of Gwangju. Setting up the open space as the platform to hose. “audience-driven” acts. Not just empty and void, the open space acts as a sheet of canvas to host constant change in time and media. This canvas is filled and generated by the audience’s participation. Each audience becomes a protagonist in this “Plaza of Participation”. Through changing boundaries and shifting programs, the plaza is a set of infrastructure that provides diverse range of experiences to the citizens. It opens up to host various events at regular intervals including indoor/outdoor exhibits and performances, while flexible enough to accomodate the needs for the special occasions.
We propose the Asian Culture Complex as the earth in between creation and disappearance. The earth that is transformed into fragmented pieces and become urban landscape filled with memories of the site and historical evolution of various spectrums of relationships. Creation and Disappearance includes a series of relationships of which the beginning/end, yin/yang, straight/curve, existant/extinct, and chaos/order are generated in every life cycles of the earth. Nevertheless they are the few examples of dichotomy taking place in all the universal relationships, creation and disappearance harbors the evolution of intricate process of infinite amount of associations.
The Asian Culture Complex stands in the middle of these complex nature of evolutions. Creating “in between” space at the leveled ground of the earth. “in between” includes the countless facts of certain environmental conditions. Fluctuating within the dichotomy of creation and disappearance, the term symbolizes infinite potential and dynamics, as well as the main driving force that can harmonize the nature – according to the eastern thought. Asian Culture Complex Gwangju is like conducting an operation to make new earth, generating new open space that accomodates changing programs and events in time, and lasts as a place to record all of the layers in history and memories of creation and disappearance.
We propose the skin of the earth to act as the framework for the Asian Culture Complex Gwangju. Two-dimensional skin if the plaza is extruded to become spatial skin. Not only stopping at changing the urban topography through spatial morphing, the plaza is rearranged by matching with diverse codes required cultural code, artistic code, urban code. matched with spatial code. The plaza is not a two-dimensional urban surface, but rather the multi-dimensional space with layers and folds of spaces that is matched by several codes. It becomes the framework of earthly generation that accommodate multiple channels of arts.
City Stage for historical memories and cultural activities Making a city – scale urban plaza of culture-scape Street Mat City – We propose the process of extruding out the existing city structures and fabrics as a way of recording the history of Gwangju existing bands of streets are extruded to become the volume in order to frame the new city condition. This means that the city’s existing fabric with historical value is also the spaces and streets with historical memories and events. Through the reversal of old streets and masses, city-scale urban mat is defined, followed by morphing it into the earthly monument. Urban mat framed out by the streets then forms the landscape slicing through the surrounding urban panorama, hosting various events and programs, while providing needed circulations.
Three-dimensional event plaza embedded in the urban mat during the culture stage (stage 01), is inserted in between streets to become the multi-dimensional skin containing cultural programs and activities. In cohesive with outside landscape elements, it acts as a stage to host diverse events. Outdoor spaces framed out by the streets constitute various themes of programs parks, commercial facilities, cultural and media centers and others.
Through a process of spatial reversal, the three-dimensional volume of the streets become ‘objet’ to which its combinations are formed as a historical matrix. Streets are no longer the left-out voids of the city, but to become an active framework containing diverse range of programs.Through each street being accentuated by the city’s important historical events over time, programs and boundaries are defined for the Historic Recorder.Reaching beyond the limits of the concept that a gallery describes only the historical events, historical matrix are generated as a symbolic space for the memories and commemoration.
New cultural network is organized at the heart of the cross-road connecting the city of Gwangju and Asia. Cultural network acts as one of apparatus linking functional mechanisms of the surrounding area with the topological context of the site. Through the rearrangement of lines and orientations embedded in the network, the compound body is created out of the existing pathways of the history and the future cultural pathways still to come. Street cells segmented by the historical events are generated by the cultural hyper-link map and the event stage in the form of a landscape. Upper level of city stage , lower level of landscape plaza combined with the existing city fabric, and the hyper street cell integrated as a network, are altogether organized into the following spatial elements and their combinations.
Hyper-street map, acting as the city plaza and landscape, is organized by the series of network cells. The site is not an isolated property, but rather becomes an open stage. The lower level of the city stage is a network of space freely interacted by the people, while the event stage at the upper level is penetrated by the series of programs to possess ideal urban dynamics.
We propose to make the new plaza as the compound body a system that randomly assembles urban fabric, landscape, paths, open space, built structure, and programs through which the new cultural courage can be generated. Two-dimensional skin of the plaza is extruded to become spatial skin. Not only stopping at changing the urban topography through spatial morphing, the plaza is rearranged by matching with diverse codes required cultural code, artistic code, urban code, matched with spatial code. The plaza is not a two-dimensional urban surface, but rather the multi-dimensional space with layers and folds of spaces that is matched by several codes. It becomes the framework of earthly generation that accommodate multiple channels of arts.
We propose to establish the complex through morphing the earth. The complex becomes the strata of contours tracing the history of Gwangju and its memories of various events, while preserving the existing urban fabric.
1) Trace of History 2) Urban Landscape of Historical Memories 3) Event Stage for Activities 4) Integration of Stages
Architects: UnSangDong Architects + Kim Woo Il Location: Gwangju, South Korea Team: Jang Yoon Gyoo, Shin Chang Hoon, Kim Woo Il Status: International Competition, 3rd prize
