CENTRAL OPEN SPACE
LOCATION Multi-Functional Adminisrative City (MAC), South Korea
CLIENT The Multi-Functional Adminisrative City Construction Agency
PROGRAM Cental Park, Recreational Activities, Museum, Performance Hall, River Catch Basin System
AREA 6.982SKM
STATUS Design 2007 (Competition)
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The contemporary solution to the problem of an urban park is to create a field of separate, (but sometimes inter-connected) follies, instrumentation, pavilions, prescribed sequences, and exposition arenas in which to capture and command the attention of the populace for the purpose of recreation, or respite from the city. We can see this strategy employed in Paris's Parc de la Villete, and Chicago's Millennium Park. Our project (COS) proposes a new model for central parkland by creating a mise en scene of muscular topography, dynamic vegetation and water-retention plazas that evolve a landscaped territory into a reversal of the typical relationship between the park and its city. The other conventional model of park serves to provide an historic replica of nature within the city as a place to escape for contemplation (ie, New York City's Central Park, London's Hyde Park). This model of development produces museum parks as relics of nature, instead of producing new engines of biological activity. COS emerges as a new form of life actively pushing the surrounding city to perform new models of public life, democracy and activity. Directly refuting the contemporary trend which develops parks into novel theme parks of recommended activities, and pre-arranged personal habits, COS believes that the minimum number of rules bring about the greatest freedoms. COS is not a destination, but an origin. The efforts of this project are intended to produce an orchestration on a massive scale of atmospheric material that develops into a new manner of public place behavior and consciousness.
The park is a mise en scene of 4 separate, but interconnected characters: 1) vegetative personalities 2) topological attitudes 3) programmatic temperaments and 4) connective tissues. The four elements work together in a complex choreography in the understanding that for the park to be successful, it will need to be better than good. It needs to be alive like an animal.
As animals behave, change, develop, evolve, sleep, get moody, playful or vicious, so does the park need to develop a personality that allows all of these attributes to emerge. It is safe to predict that over the course of time the park, its internal interests, and program will undergo adjustments and evolution. The better the park is, the more active it is in becoming inseparable from its citizen partners. In doing suck, like culture, the park will be at its more engaging when in a state of revision and alteration.
Taking this animalistic position, the approach for the design of the field is less scripted, and more choreographed to provide a democratic palate on which countless private and public programmatic effects can develop constantly. This proposal is less a "scheme" and more an outline to help orchestrate and give birth to the evolutionary park scheme of the city itself. The proposal puts forth the 4 characters in an effort to provide some discipline, and direction, just like the grid serves as discipline-giving device for the city; allowing variations to occur without prescription within its confines, but providing a sorting order to encourage healthy growth.
