Seoul Public Bang

Initially Seoul’s social public space lied in the Madang, after the economic boom, the vertical city swallowed these claustral spaces. The city has therefore responded to this lack of social spaces with the Bangs fulfilling the task of living room. The question is: “Is this need for space confinement and limitation also evident in city public spaces?”

The question, then, arises: Is this need for space confinement and limitation also evident in city public spaces? Through an accurate on-field analysis, these “rooms” were identified in the city and the appropriation’s methods recognized. At the end, the dialectical process that involved the city has found a synthesis in a project of these areas. The result is a continuous grid, a constant boundary, an infrastructure for space occupation. Its function is not to redesign the elements that characterize the appropriation of public territory, but to amplify the spirit of conquest. This is due to its behavior that simulates an artificial forest (a profound vector of sociality for Korean culture) and providing this grid with flexible and neutral tools that allow its most varied uses. This is ideally infinitely extensible and repeatable anywhere, undoubtedly from the context that welcomes it, well aware of the fact that almost certainly the Korean spirit of conquest would shape it to get the most benefit it could possibly have. And those unexpected uses, the intentions of personalizing the space, make the grid itself a pure tension, an endless possibility.