Easter Island has almost been erased from history as it has no clear documentation of its past. Mysterious Moai statues are the only evidence of civilization. I gained a similar impression of Samjeon-dong, Seoul. Modern Moai at Samjeon-dong began with the consideration of a symbiotic structure for a city, including housing created by stacking commercial facilities and residential units on the everyday cultural ground.
The site is located at the corner of a village largely populated by four to five-story multiplex housing developments, all of similar size on uniformly planned sites. Even though the size and volume of the rectangular sites, each divided by a gridlike urban planning, is similar, each site has different conditions. Instead of concentrating on a more glossy form to maximize a building’s profile, as found in the many villages of multiplex housing, it is assumed that making facade flexible in responding to the condition of all four sides would create a flexible architecture and resolve the relationship with its surrounding features.
As architectural practice must overcome the mismatch and limitations caused by heterogeneity in retail facilities and multiplex housing. I hope it will begin to propose downtown residential areas of new promenades, enabling ‘cultural production and consumption‘ combined with the lightness of an everyday program. It can become a village that encourages families to stroll and allow for everyday, smaller-scale culture to flourish, rather than existing as commercial spaces purely for consumption in another generic commercial/residential building.
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