Seoul City Wall Project – city case studies

Lighting

Seoul already pays much attention to lighting within the city, although projects seem to be lucid and playful now, a citywide plan or theme could provide continuity and strong identity. the first example of program for city lighting is alexanderplatz in berlin, where the ccc has been known to do their blinkenlights project:

next up is the SPOTS media facade in berlin, potsdamerplatz:

also on continental europe, rotterdam’s kpn building:

Green-Spaces

here’s a look at singapore. notice its concentration of green space in the heart of the city.

london’s green spaces are also mostly concentrated into key areas.

this differs compared to the cities of muenster and naarden, where green-space becomes a gesture of the former city wall within the urban planning.

this layout provides accessibility to green-spaces by a wider radius of city dwellers. If Seoul would adopt this continental european urban planning trend, It could provide for the city a common cross-section of park-space that links districts with automobile-alternative access. People could bike and walk from district to district within the park ring. An electric tram system or maglev train would be cool too…

Green-space within the city is freed from privileged neighborhoods and becomes accessible by all points of the city. for tourists and locals alike, it would activate the city wall as a monumental geographical feature for way-finding within the inner city.

a long time coming

welcome to Europe, buddy!

summery of thoughts regarding OMA internship, week 1

it’s hard to draw lines. no, i don’t mean lines that make drawings. i am talking about the virtual lines and psycho-geographical boundaries we make for ourselves and the world around us. now that kairn and alex have joined me in rotterdam, our internship is in full swing. it seems like we have been working on this together for months already…

on order for us to digest the massively huge amount of data that AMO has produced over the years, we came up with a simple but effective way to quantify the ideas, concepts, themes and typologies. here is a short video that we produced during our first week of research. enjoy!

forget that. forget you even saw it.

look away! nothing to see here! whatever you thought you read, you didn’t. just look over there at the pretty pictures of our ultra-bland and non-eventful stay in Rotterdam, where we concentrate on a job we truly love to do:

the indispensable course of momentum

the time goes by so quickly. it’s blinding, the speed of it all. i will attempt to summarize my experiences so far this season.

how do i quantify the value of this last month? so soon the pang of summer will be upon us. as is in most states of change, this spring has been a torrential series of mountains and valleys; no doubt that king pendopoo himself need prove to one and all our (in)significance, as we walk the precarious landscape of the long now.

of all the events that can change the course of life in any given direction, some stand out as president, its true significance only apparent to some. the first was known to me back in march. karin, alex and i received news from OMA in rotterdam that we were to join them for the summer as an intern “dream team” for the thinktank section of the company called AMO. since that time, i have been steadily gearing myself towards our eventual move to rotterdam to participate in arguably, one of the most exciting firms in architecture/urban planing today.

meanwhile, with the new spark that collaborative strategies offered, karin, alex and i did some great work with violeta houbenova and niki lampaski for the Argent/kings cross regeneration in the city of london. while working on this project, i soon re-realized the importance of the virtual domain and its blurring of perception and paradigm. as the real and virtual became unified, so do our online experiences collide with real life making our lifestyle that much more intangible, the two complimenting one another more and more by the nanosecond. this project was so well received that the director of my MA course in london has decided that the project is worth pursuing farther. this good news of course, excited me. along with our joint internship with OMAMO, i felt as if everything i have learned up to this point was being harnessed and directed towards a bright future.

then my grandma in singapore passed away. it wasn’t unexpected, as she was sick already for quite some time, yet it is truly miraculous what she has achieved in her lifetime, with the cultivation of such an amazing and loving family that spans the globe. as matriarch of our widespread clan, she was our living ancestor from a time when life was very different and proved to us the invaluable skill of adaptation. my relationship with her was sparse but never temporal – i would say timeless. i will miss her very much but know that her legacy will persevere in the people she has affected in her lifetime.

and not only did i loose my grandma this month but i lost my OMA as well. just last week karin, alex and i received a letter from OMA stating that they could not find an appropriate project for us (but we suspect it was actually for visa reasons). this unfortunate turn of events completely disrupted my plans for the summer, already giving notice to our landlord that we would leave our flat in london, not to mention losing the dream of working for a company that so inspires such as OMA. my collegue Myrto put it quite bluntly to me; as a young architect, from OMA, there is no where else to go but down.

not knowing what to do next, i reached out to my friend and mentor Dan Hill, of cityofsound.com and monocle magazine fame. he was the first person i turned to and his help and advice has been spot on and extremely supportive. seeing more in me then i have wisdom to even notice, he has taught me the genius of personal experience. after talking to him i pulled myself together and began to rearrange my outlook of the future. he also kindly posted on his enlightening weblog about karin, alex and me, even in the midst of organizing Postopolis! in NYC. because of his invaluable input and the inspiration of just witnessing his own practice, i realized the immense work and passion that one has to endure to be happy with what they do.

this morning i set out to find a new place to live since i am about to be homeless on the 6th of june. when walking out of the finsbury park tube station, i noticed that alex was trying to call me so i took a seat on the curb and gave him a call. he frantically conveyed to me that OMA wrote back and said they wanted us, after all. then i asked myself, how can this month get anymore thrilling?

j.

robot tattoo.. or .:|-=r0b07pr0n=-|:.

i asked what the bleep is it too when i first saw one. QR code is what’s known as a two dimensional barcode, or matrix code dreamed up by Denso-Wave of Japan in 1994. they are used in Japan quite a bit, but you can also find QR code online. i first saw the code on cityofsound.com and became curious, so i did some research.

QR code can be read by most modern camera phones. you can grab the software from here, and start generating codes here. what’s fun is that you can load it up with all sorts of info and also has some pretty dope applications.

for instance, you can have a phone directly sms any number upon acquiring a positive scan. you can load rss feed addresses so that you can aggregate information such as flickr photostreams, gmail and podcasts. you can also use it to leave simple text messages or numbers. the more info within the code, the more complex and dense the pattern becomes.

being a relatively old system, i am sure that people have been using it in graffiti and urban art. it is most definitely being used in the advertising sector and there are even design firms that specialize in integrating QR code into communicative design.

karin and i were toying the other day about using QR Code as blueprints for urban planing. imagine scanning QR code in google earth of entire city blocks and getting links to concise information directly to your mobile phone. well.. just a thought. if it has already been implemented then please post a link.

i have incorporated QR code into my weblog on the sidebar. with a flick o’ the wrist, you can have my contact details automagically upload directly into your phone. pretty sweet at the bar, if it was tattooed somewhere accessible.

in anticipation of rotterdam

a few weeks ago i had a taste of life in rotterdam while working for the V2: Institute for Unstable Media. called in by my good friend and colleague danja, i had the opportunity to work in the “hack” department of the V2 Lab during this years DEAF07 and V2 25th anniversary events.

most of the work i did was of a technical nature, and involved climbing up to the tops of buildings fixing yagi antennae (all hail the mighty zip-tie!!!) to throw network accessibility wirelessly between the various locations of the festival. some buildings i am proud to say i stood on the roof of include Witte de With / TENT, NAi and of course the V2 building proper.

we also had to lay down quite a bit of patch cable (we were dropping CAT-5e like spidey slings web) and also deployed numerous wireless hotspots, computer terminals and workstations for visiting artists and other tech-monkee-ish jobs. even had a chance to VJ along side danja at unDEAF… that was cool.

one of the more mundane tasks i had to perform at the festival was to monitor audio and video live-streams that were being cast on the DEAF07 webpage. this involved sitting and watching and listening to lectures… which isn’t so bad until you realize that you have spent the entire day sitting in a dark hall staring at 4 or so monitors while outside it is immaculately sunny and 25 degrees.

what i did enjoy the most was getting to spend time with some sorely missed friends. sabruno and danja were kind enough to let me stay at their place during the duration of my contract with V2, and even though i was pretty tuckered out by the time we got home from work, we still managed to have that cozy feeling. eating good food and sitting in the twilight of the setting sun over the vista of rotterdam’s skyline, on top of bruno and danja’s building, drinking beer and fixing bikes, is my minds’ eye of the netherlands quintessential.

thanks to danja and bruno for putting up with me while i was in rotterdam and i can’t wait to come back this summer with karin and alex to begin work with OMA/AMO… w00t!