Architecture starts from a
longing for certain places. The utopian imagination that dreams of a better
place is the driving force of architecture. Historically utopia provided an
alternative to overcome reality in architecture as well. This was maximized through
the vision of architects who strived to create new modernized cities after the
World Wars. Throughout the nooks and crannies of Korea, which had to
reconstruct everything from scratch, this utopian method of experiment was
implemented in a bizarre way at an extremely rapid pace. Architects and
politicians were all in the same boat, heading toward the ideals for developing
the country anew. Some 60 years later, now that we are in the "era of
diminished expectations" where desires for countless things are
emasculated, how is the utopia conceived by our own architecture work? With
what form and content will 'Architopia' be filled, born as an ideal for the
architects? These are the questions being posed to initiate this exhibition.
To properly answer these
questions, it is necessary to track the traces of Architopia scattered
throughout the urban history of architecture; that is, re-exploring the places
that historically project the desire for Architopia and rediscovering their significance.
By exploring this process, it would be possible to presume the unpredictable
architectural utopia. The architectural ideal that seems invisible can, at
least, be estimated somewhat through the image of an alternative Architopia,
which varies in its aspect by era and struggles to overcome the limitations of
the times.
Sewoon Sangga, Paju Book
City, Heyri Art Valley, and Pangyo Housing Complex that are introduced in the
exhibition are places that have become infrastructure or architectural
exhibition halls due to the urban-scale intervention of architecture. Sewoon
Sangga, which preserves the spirit of modernistic ideals by surviving among the
urban works of architects in the history of architecture and urban design in
Korea, is a typical place that reveals the dreams of an architect and a
politician. Paju Book City and Heyri Art Valley have begun as alternatives to
the previous master-plan types of urban development. Designed as places where
art and culture seek collectivity, these are the Architopias that adopted the
concept of an architectural coordinator. Pangyo Housing Complex is a
large-scale district of detached housing that will probably never exist again,
and is a low-density new town designed to avoid the homogeneity and closure of
an apartment complex. Many individual architects participated, but ultimately,
this unique place ended up taking on another form of a housing exhibition.
Houses in (West) Pangyo are the object of desire for the newly rising middle
class, and have become a venue for young architects to make their debut.
These places vary in motives
and backgrounds, but they all start from the desire to portray a better place.
They have witnessed the delicate power struggles between architects and owners,
which led them to either sustain or lose their significance. As the
government-led utopian construction plan looms, the specific principals leading
them have become vague, and they are turning into a vessel that embodies
individual desires. Now, in the era of low growth where opportunities for
large-scale construction projects like Sewoon Sangga, Paju and Heyri have
disappeared, the image of utopia still remains in the desires of individuals in
search of a better tomorrow. That dim light that once casted on the chances
that our architecture must take on today in the form of massive construction
has faded.
This exhibition presents a
layout to explore a specific reality that upholds a certain ideal called ‘architectural
utopia’, rather than plainly introducing individual
works. Hybrid elements like photos, drawings, videos, graphics and text are
arranged with visual aptitude as if seeing a featured article in a magazine,
emphasizing vivid reading experiences. Architects, photographers, critics and
graphic designers who participated in the exhibition are image collectors and
producers capturing the 'Experiment of Architopia', displaying the traces of
utopia revealed at certain points in time.
