A modernist utopia taken by the ordinary. The consecutive lives of the Seun Complex in Seoul, South Korea

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Joonwoo Kim
Bruno De Meulder

Abstract

After the military coup in 1961, the military government stimulated industrialization to accelerate economic development in South Korea. In this context a carefully managed urbanization by development was considered essential with propagating modernization. In its modernization zeal, new modern utopia was created by modernist architects, who aimed to restructure the city of Seoul by imported modern ideas. The junta also promoted its ideals of a modern utopia through sponsoring urban development projects. The Seun Complex as a mega-structure was a main pilot project of the military government that combined commercial functions and modern housing. The planned complex, which was superimposed onto the existing urban system without detailed considerations of local contexts, included a 1 km elevated pedestrian mall and ground-level vehicle passageways. This mega-complex, which ultimately connected eight massive buildings in a continuous chain, was finalized in 1968. Overnight, the Seun Complex became the Korean icon of the modernist utopia in the first half of the 1970’s, but it faced several critical situations from economical, political and cultural changes during the rebuilding of Seoul from 1980s to 2000s. This decline of the complex was influenced by its limitations, which came from intended isolation and unsolidified spatial design, practical modifications, and a gap between ideal and real. While the complex lost its status as a modern icon, it was gradually transformed to meet new inner city demands as a cluster of urban manufactures. Mega-structure became a new platform to contain various requests from its neighboring area and provide interactive space in the inner city of Seoul. The area surrounding the complex spontaneously has built wide networks with mega-structure, which has bred urban metabolism from the bottom. At the turn of the 20th century, the government tried to destruct the old modernist structure and superimpose again a new utopia according to the tenets of developmentalism. However, the Seun Complex was able to maintain strong and wide alliances with the local urban production industry and thus maintain its integrity with the neighboring area.

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Author Biographies

Joonwoo Kim, KU Leuven

Joonwoo Kim is a doctoral researcher at the OSA research group (Urbanism & Architecture) of the Department of Architecture, KU Leuven. He holds a European postgraduate master in urbanism from KU Leuven and TU Delft for which he completed a thesis concerning the socio-economic border of Brussels. With a bachelor of architecture and a master of urban design in Korea, Joonwoo also has a background in architecture and urban design. In addition, he participated as a senior researcher in several urban planning practices in Korea. His current research focus is on developmental urbanism in Asian contexts. By means of both historical urban research and spatial analysis, Joonwoo is interested in the origin of market-oriented urbanism in Korea and the related shift from postcolonial to neoliberal approaches.

Bruno De Meulder, KU Leuven

Bruno De Meulder studied civil engineering-architecture at the Department of Architecture, KU Leuven (Belgium), where he also obtained his doctoral degree, and where today he teaches history, theory and practice of urbanism. His teaching takes place mostly through urban design studios that he also cherishes as a key tool for research and practice. His focus is on issues of urbanism in the postindustrial and postcolonial era. Bruno De Meulder is currently working on an international oeuvre engaging with dispersed urbanism and what Dennis Cosgrove labeled promiscuous territories. He is the coordinator of the MaHS and MaUSP postgraduate programmes and heads the OSA research group (Urbanism & Architecture) at the mentioned department.