Project Statement:
The Living Grid Park reconsiders the meaning
of a ‘large park’ and its function at the
center of a city. How can an agriculturally productive
plain transform into a socially productive open space?
The rice paddy becomes five landscapes, the urban waterfront,
rice paddy demonstration field, international display
gardens, wetlands, and forests. As the grid is transformed
to a human scale, the vastness preserved, new landscapes
emerge to be experienced by the new city.
Project Narrative:
Living Grid Park – the
Central Open Space for the Multi-functional Administrative
City, South Korea
This studio focuses on the idea of a ‘flatbed
picture plane’ à la Robert Rauschenberg’s
artistic endeavors. Accumulation, range, scale, and
density are considerations at hand while looking at
patterns within nature, how Rauschenberg constructs
his pieces, and how modernist painters evoke a sense
of feeling, time and space within landscape and still
life paintings. These ideas are applied in the organization,
layout, and depiction of the design concepts for a new
large park at the center of a new city.
The Central Open Space of the
MAC
The Multi-functional Administrative City [MAC] proposal
is for a new decentralized metropolitan city in South
Korea. The strategic distribution of administration,
urban development, culture, health, and technology throughout
the ring of the city focuses on achieving self-sufficiency
as the foundation for the city. A central open space
will function as the main urban landscape, implementing
the concepts of non-hierarchy and decentralization.
Currently, the open space is used as a
productive rice paddy, bordered by the Geum River to
the south, small villages to the west and northeast,
and a wild forest in the distance. A flat open plain,
of nearly seven square kilometers, the paddy is aligned
with Jeonweol-san Mountain and Wonsu-bong Mountain.
In Korea, an open space is often utmost cultural significance
when it is facing water and has mountains in the background.
The Living Grid comes to life as the rice
paddy grid and existing drainage infrastructure is transformed
into various new landscapes. As it exists, the rice
paddy is a monoculture landscape; a vast wide-open expanse
with no relation to the human scale. The concept for
the Living Grid Park is to create a variety of landscapes—the
Urban Waterfront, the Rice Paddy Demonstration Field,
the International Display Gardens, the Wetlands, and
the Forest—to break up the vastness of the open
space, providing a myriad of experiences and places
within the landscape.
The Five Landscape Types
Each landscape type provides the context for community
amenities while creating a unique sequential experience
as one travels across the park.
As one travels west
to east across the site, the spaces alter between enclosed
human scaled spaces to vast open spaces reminiscent
of the previous rice paddy. The Urban Waterfront contains
the plazas, promenades and cultural amenities such as
museums, opera houses, music venues, and theatres. The
Rice Paddy Demonstration Field preserves that
tradition of rice production on site, becoming more
of a research and education facility for residents and
visitors. The International Display Gardens
offer a botanical display of local native plants as
well as various greenhouses and museums dedicated to
international plants. The Wetlands use the
existing drainage infrastructure of the rice paddy to
create permanent ponds as a nature reserve and habitat
for migrating birds. The Forest is a series
of plantations and orchards, growing the trees for the
new park and future expansion of the city while transitioning
to a wild forest with pathways and trails to connect
to the natural mountain forest to the northeast of the
park.
|
