Seoul City has finally decided on a plan to redevelop the Gwanghwamun area in the heart of downtown Seoul into a world-class plaza blending history and culture with cutting-edge technology. Or so they say.
Here’s the master plan:
All this should be completed by June 2009. Could prove quite nice, if everything works out.
Oh, and if the Great Pile of Poo on the Cheonggyecheon wasn’t enough, Insa-dong is about to get a Big Calligraphy Brush:
The best that could be said about this is that unlike the Great Pile of Poo on the Cheonggyecheon, at least this eyesore-in-the-making will be locally made.
20 Comments
hmmm… a ‘world-class plaza blending history’—it looks big enough for North Korean troops to march through in style. no doubt there will be a lot of useless CCTV cameras to snap their blurry mugs, too.
Why don’t they just put ‘em large stone-carved dicks (Doharubang-style) all over the place like what they did in another Korean park, that’ll make ‘em “the world’s first”!
I guess it’s to be a pedestrian only plaza?
Heh, even in the artist’s rendering a bus has found its way on there.
That is just a riot police bus.
It seems like a good idea if they can figure out how to redirect all the traffic.
The brush sculpture looks interesting. If the city could keep the surroundings clean, anything they put there would better.
I looked at the Oldenberg sculpture (snail) downtown and it actually works in that space. I did not think I would like it but it seems to work.
I really feel there needs to be a strong, willed response to the street stickers, banners, trash, etc. since this city looks like hell in many places. Out towards Guro today, I saw so many newer buildings that have so many garish signs, banners, no planning for pedestrians, not to mention the sterile, tombstone apartment buildings. That sort of gold-rush, boom town lack of planning results in public space that is very ugly by any standard.
Urban planning is very contentious and often problematic but I would really love to see some tasteful thought put to all of the city since many of the places that have had new buildings put up, without any consideration of how they fit into the neighborhood, lack character. They just look cheap. Another good example of such a failure in design and execution is the “egg building” that was completed this year at Seoul National University entrance, right at the subway there by the new Kwanack Gu offices.
This is never going to happen, unless they plan to route the traffic through tunnels underground.
It will be either full of traffic or desolate. Nothing enlivens an area like good streetside retail. What it would be good for is a streetfair a couple of times a year–something similar to Taste of Chicago that lines the streets of Grant Park each July.
There are already tunnels underground there — the subway Line 1 (Dark Blue, old Red Line), Line 3 (Orange Line) and Line 5 (Purple Line) are all running under and around those intersections. So the digging required to route traffic underground would be heroic indeed. Good thing The Bulldozer™ will be in office to support this plan.
Right, then, it’s not going to happen - unless they bring in the NORK sappers to run the traffic tunnels deeper than the Moscow and Pyongyang subways.
In the first picture, the American Embassy seems conspicuously absent.
Even if the plan were realistic, it’s dumb. Most of the buildings along that street, not to mention the 5000 police buses, require road access.
On top of that, if the plaza were built, it’d simply become a nice place for people to protest, as they wouldn’t require the police to restrict traffic.
robert, have you ever heard precisely how much they paid that artist for that piece of shit?
#10 the USA embassy is suppose to move to a location a little further from Seoul’s geomantic power axis. They had a spot picked out but work was stopped because is was the site of some historically important girls high school (or something like that).
I think some folks would not be happy until the new US embassy is located next to the The Grand Ole Opry on Hooker Hill.
How about a caption contest for the waygook pointing at the brush? I’ll give it a shot after I’ve had a couple of beers.
You mean like, “Damned clever those Chinese”?
#15,
Maybe they’re thinking “I’ve seen better dick sculptures elsewhere than that”.
“Well, ma’am, if I were going to abandon a baby, that’s where I’d leave it - right over there, next to that big piece of crap. See, someone’s already left theirs, just behind it.”
If memory serves me right that historically important girls school (middle, I believe) is now a Xii apartment - Samgakchi.
Last I heard Cp Coiner will be the future site of the US embassy.
…the consular officers?
Bike paths? Please. This city needs more in the downtown area.
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