Landscript by H-Sang Seung

I was first referred to Seung by Haewon Shin, after I described my interest in the Korean approach to landscape Most recently, I read Landscript which has confirmed some previous ideas and widened my horizons in terms of understanding Seoul’s landscape. Some notes and comments:

‘If there was a mountain, it had to be leveled; if there was a valley, it had to be filled in; if there was a river, it had to be redirected’.1

Seung places much of the blame of Seoul’s skyline today on a greedy Western influence. Towers – which now dominate much of Seoul’s skyline – originally emerged as an architectural form of compensation. Multiple stories distinguish from other buildings, but with so many now, they have become almost indistinguishable from one another. Seung argues that Seoul doesn’t need to emulate landmarks of Paris’ Eiffel tower or Dubai’s Burj Khalifa because the landscape is a landmark in itself. It gives Seoul its identity. Perhaps this is an unrealistic suggestion for a world city but Seung argues that older buildings were built at a scale so as not to damage the natural landmarks, thereby respecting the landscape.

From Inwangsan towards the city (Ian Cooper)

“Seoul was not based on a diagram. Among the 20 cities in the world with a population of 10 million people, Seoul is the only metropolis located within a mountainous region. This is the element that distinguishes Seoul from all other metropolitan cities… Its mountainous geography is the most important element in recording the 600-year urban history of Seoul, a period beginning with its designation as the capital of the Joseon dynasty… There are four inner mountains – Bugaksan, Naksan, Namsan, and Inwangsan – and four outer mountains – Bukhansan, Yongmasan, Gwanaksan, Deokyangsan… The mountainous landscape is in itself the landmark of Seoul”.2

L-r: Map of Seoul with fortress wall 1765, Map of Palmanova - venetian star fort 17th century

Of many examples, Seung notably mentions Palmanova, a radial, hierarchical city where the land has been altered to make a diagrammatic city work. It is a city severed from the land, where surroundings were considered the enemy. A moat was dug and a high castle walls built to ward off evaders. Comparatively, the old city of Seoul has a peripheral fortress wall, not dissimilar to Palmanova. However, Seoul was chosen as Korea’s capital due to its location within mountains, a natural form of defense. Seung claims Palmanova illustrates that the ‘ethics of the land’3 was an unfamiliar concept in Europe, and that this has resulted in western ideas trampling the Korean landscape. Whereas old cities sustained the logic of the land, development simply became an accumulation of money-hungry towers.

Korean hillside neighborhoods are a typical feature of Korean urban landscapes. Seung mentions ‘Daldonge’ which is located on a dramatic topography, not dissimilar to some areas I’ve been exploring in Seoul. The road layout is not only a circular network but they include communal courtyards, a meeting place, a playground… ‘It is architecture molded from the land.’4 Such communities, along with the Shamanist village on Inwangsan have been torn apart by pockets of redevelopment all over Seoul. Daldonge as remembered by Seung no longer exists.

Richard Sennett’s Wallenberg Lecture in1998 entitled “The Spaces for Democracy” spoke of a decentralised democracy having not only political, but visual dimensions too. Many prefer the jumbled, polyglot architecture of neighborhoods to the symbolic statements made by big central buildings. This is an issue I hope to address this year, thinking of older neighborhoods verses large complexes that dominate much of the city today.

“Teomuni” is a pattern that is inscribed on the ground, almost like a pattern of retaining walls revealing the nature of the landscape in Seoul. Like the palimpsest of a continuously re-written piece of parchment, landscape – an  infrastructure within it – reveals of what once was.