Tag: Seoul

The People’s City

Imagine the city as a space for borrowing instead of buying, says architecture studio MOTOElastico in their book “Borrowed City”. | MOTOElastico
Imagine the city as a space for borrowing instead of buying, says architecture studio MOTOElastico in their book “Borrowed City”. | MOTOElastico

The city is often portrayed as a playground for the rich and powerful: the real estate developer, the urban planner, the starchitect. From their point-of-view (often high up in skyscrapers), ordinary city inhabitants look nothing more than specks amidst the glitzy urban skyline.

Two recent books from Asia take us down to the streets of the city instead. Both publications are fascinating collections of hyper-local vernacular designs that demonstrate how two Asian cities are built from the ground-up.

For the cover of “Borrowed City”, graphic designer Fritz K. Park reappropriated the visual language of the yellow-and-black striped street barricades commonly found in Seoul.
For the cover of “Borrowed City”, graphic designer Fritz K. Park reappropriated the visual language of the yellow-and-black striped street barricades commonly found in Seoul.

 

Borrowed City (2013) is a tour through Seoul by MOTOElastico. The architecture studio has been documenting how private citizens use public space for their personal benefit in the capital since 2009. Turning sidewalks into stores with just a few baskets of goods, planting vegetables along public staircases, or ‘parking’ on the roadside to have a picnic lunch — these are just some of the book’s examples of how citizens have built their own spaces in the city; each intervention is photographed and enhanced with 3-D models. By reading such acts as “borrowing” as opposed to “buying” the city, the studio (headed by Italians Marco Bruno and Simone Carena) makes a case for how the considerate use of public spaces by citizens can help build a more participatory and inclusive city.

Siu King-chung’s lesser designs (2013) showcases similar projects from Hong Kong. Inspired by 19th century English designer and critic William Morris’s idea of the “Lesser Arts”, Siu created a book that celebrates the design wisdom of ordinary citizens. Beginning with a typical Hong Kong home and ending out on the city’s colourful neon-lit streets, the associate professor at the city’s PolyU Design points out the variety of anonymous designs in everyday life through photographs. The simple Chinese and English captions prove how design and creativity are not exclusively for professionals — “Lesser designs” for Siu are not lousier, just less obvious.

What makes both books particularly precious is that they offer another view of city life — one that is often transient and threatened by rapid urban development. Whether it is in Seoul, Hong Kong or any of the growing cities in Asia, “modern” solutions are increasingly introduced with the promise of order, efficiency, and a better living environment. But by re-framing seemingly chaotic street life through smart citizen interventions, both books offer a more humanistic reading of city living that begs a closer look.

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Written for Elizabeth Spiers and Chappell Elison’s Online Publishing class at D-Crit.

CREATIVE©ITIES

“Creativity” is a buzzword in urban development today. Many governments are enacting master plans and policies to build a future city powered by industries offering creative products and services, and populated by open-minded and imaginative citizens. This idea of a “creative city” is built upon a triumvirate of ideas — creative city, creative economy and creative class — and it first emerged in the US during the global economic restructuring over a decade ago. It has since spread across the globe and become the new paradigm of what cities should be today.

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CREATIVE©ITIES is a project I worked on last year which mapped out 10 cities in the Asia-Pacific that are examples of the “metacity”. The maps were created by asking local designers and artists to recommend people, places and products and projects that represented their “creative city”. Despite the different cultures and languages across cities like Seoul, Bangkok, Manila, Singapore, there existed a common creative infrastructure including bookstores, cafes as well as art and design centers. Within them were content that crossed national and cultural borders, such as products, publications and art from the region. The “creative city” then is an international space of cultural production and collaboration, but it can also be a generic urban order easily imposed upon anywhere around the world. It matches a similar itinerary I’ve often taken in my overseas trips: despite visiting different cities, I’m always traveling the same map. 

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Written for Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi’s Cultural Theory class at D-Crit in response to“Introduction: Metropolis, Megalopolis and Metacity” by Brian McGrath and Grahame Shane