Workshop 1: project swap

Model-making in studio at KNUA, models from workshop

This workshop gave us the opportunity to discuss and make models of each of our projects. We chose names out of a hat and made a model which we felt expressed the chosen project. We swapped twice an had discussions at the end. I tried to work with an attitude of learning through making. I jotted down only a few notes to begin with and started making, knowing that my models were likely to alter and change as I made.

Clockwise from top left: My model of Tomi's project, my model of Beni's project,
Alpa's model of my project, Beni's model of my project

Firstly, I got Tommy’s project:
This model attempts to convey the peripheral conditions of the city. Urban mountain ranges overlap with natural mountain ranges, pushing and pulling the edges of the city. If looking here to place death (and celebrate and remember it), careful consideration of this situation is integral. Is a proposition placed next to a building, at the foot of the mountain, between city and landscape? How does it connect to the existing urban fabric?

Secondly, I got Beni’s:
Beni has mentioned that in Korean public spaces, there are often pockets of domesticity, which these models have tried to express. The first sectional model looks at how residential apartments and markets feel very disconnected in the city, and yet small areas of domestic living appear in the markets. Somehow, these pockets reveal more about life within the home than the Apatu buildings themselves. Secondly, the dark market alley shows a sequence of doors as if looking into life behind the façade of high-rise apartment blocks.

Models of my project:

Beni’s description of her model of my project:
‘The model tries to think about retaining walls spatially. Traditionally, piles of stones were used to form terraced landscapes: the rocks where placed on top of each other following the horizontal layering of the land. In contrast, modern walls are vertical elements that disrupt the landscape and hide the different strata of the ground. I tried to express this by covering with white paper the corrugated cardboard layers stacked on top of each other.
The direction of the circulation in relation to the wall can also be explored spatially. The ladders leaning on the walls try to illustrate the impossibility of climbing up the mountains due to the scale of retaining walls. In contrast, traditional villages, like Inwangsan, allow a more permeable circulation.’

Alpa’s description of her model of my project:
'Mountains can be considered as modulations in the horizontal plane - contour lines (a planar expression of a 3D phenomena) reinforce this reading.  The retaining walls are a strong vertical presence that impose a re-reading of the landscape.  Initially the mountains determined the position of the walls but in aggregate, the walls themselves begin to define the landscape.'

This has been a useful exercise, both in modeling other peoples’ projects and seeing what people make of my project. Points to take away:
- Traditional verses contemporary walls,: differences in construction and scales
- Integration verses separation of walls to buildings
- Impact on circulation from the location and orientation of the walls, permeability
- Horizontal verses vertical planes defining the landscape
- A new way of reading the landscape through city infrastructure

For images of all the models, see the most Seoul Satellite blogpost.