Reprising the grand poop of Cheonggyeoncheon, the Korean group that is set to develop the the Yongsan Business District area of Seoul has teamed up with another eccentric foreigner and chosen the design below:
(Photo from archiCentral)
Well, at least it’s better than this.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
This is one designer that I really abhor (Libeskind).
Good god, what tasteless hacks pick this design fantasy!?
My first impression is that it looks like Seoul flipping the bird at the world.
Fits with the earlier discussion about Korea branding: “Go to hell!” .
Geez, put down the kool-aid container will ya. This project is in DEEP trouble and is not likely to be built any time soon and certainly never in the form so bombastically proposed by the Samsung-led development consortium, whose designation of Liebeskind is just a stunt to get somebody who otherwise should know better to make their OPM avaialble to pay for this abortion in the making and to get some breathing room from the creditors/investors/sellers who already are threatening to put this abcess out of its misery. KORAIL, which owns the property, entered into the deal in order to raise the dosh for the Seoul-Incheon Airport line. Although they also retain a significant equity interest in the project, they are now threatening to blow it up because the consortium hasn’t made it’s installment payments after the initial deposit. And nowadays the foreign fireman (i.e., Uncle Foreign Investment) ain’t coming to the rescue because all it’s own firehouses are themselves on fire. It would be just as well, except that the most likely outcome is going to be a very fucked up piece of urban planning, as the grand plan crumbles and the usual Korean bricolage creeps in like a lot of kudzu.
Sperwer said it – this one’s enmired in its own absurd scale, especially in these times. It just makes you wonder why they’re also talking about redevelopment on the Gangnam side.
Wow. Pretty harsh early reaction against an otherwise stunning and audaciously ambitious redevelopment plan.
Any yet, audacious ambition is what Korea does best, even if it’s not always successful. The choice of Libeskind is inspired, of course, and his genius is most definitely what Korea needs and lacks on its own.
The final development will look very different from even these progressed sketches, but Seoul — and Libeskind — is very much on the right track.
DLB
This project started about three years ago, with such steps undertaken as outlined in #3. Ever seen the large banners hanging from some of the apartment buildings in the area, in protest of the deal they got? They’ve been hanging there over a year and a half, at least, and that was when their buyout had already been worked out. There’s nothing new about this project, save for a reworking of the building design.
Kinda tired of these foreign designs being plopped down on the local landscape. Need more of a fusion I think. Here’s hoping it retains the cultural attribute of each stair being a different height.
I’m a bit depressed imagining how all the fancy buildings will have 70 percent off Red and Black mountain wear gear on sale outside each…hopefully that won’t be the case.
Well, at any design, Koreans are ready to consecrate this Korea to Jesus Christ and his Dad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUlQRxq3pf0
# 2,
Maybe it’s pointed in Japan’s direction?
Yeah, here is an article on Libeskind’s genius:
http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock063003.asp
and comments 1 and 3 on the site plan links above summarize part of my thoughts exactly.
The Chinese get the bird’s nest (stadium) and water cube and this is the best that Seoul can get? (not to mention the scale problem with something this size — where do the people fit in!?)
Samsung management seem to have this fixation with grandiose things.
Elgin,
NRO? Really? I mean, is that REALLY the first place you’d go for an understanding of Libeskind’s genius?
Like I said – Wow!
Cheers,
David Barch
Time to revive an old classic of mine:
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2009/03/05/mass-studies-cho-minsuk/#comment-214684
It appears Asian nations now are locked in an arms race to see who can produce the most tastelessly showy demonstrations of high-profile architectural weirdness.
Exhibit 1. Proposal for Ansan urban planning. Truly a marvel of what-the-fuckitude. An approach that desperately cries out for a sanity-check. God has not meant for people to live in buildings with funny, curvy shapes.
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2009/…..-to-ansan/
Exhibit 2. The Ann Demeuleemeester Shop. Inspired by the Chia-Pet. The use of the long, douchebag Dutch name only adds to the Euro-bizarre Mystique.
Exhibit 3.
http://www.newyorker.com/onlin…..-kool.html
Recall the Rem Koolhaas designed CCTV building in China that caught fire recently. A prominent structure whose shape is as irrational and self-consciously bizarre as you can imagine. The Chinese nationals were gleeful with joy when this monstrosity met its well-deserved demise. Chinese netizens photoshopped images of the burning CCTV building with rampaging Godzilla’s in the foreground.
Shortly afterward, perhaps with the CCTV building in mind, the architect Andres Duany delivered a talk in which he mocked modern architects for having “explored every shape that could be hyper-cantilevered, crashed, randomized, slashed, perforated, upturned, bent, dematerialized, dissed or otherwise transgressed.”
I grow weary of eccentric foreign architects coming to Asia, ejaculating onto naive, unsuspecting Asians their effete, limp-wristed, avant-garde, bourgeois ways and turning it into some surreal Galapagos Island of architectural monstrosities locked in a game of Survival of the Most Outlandishly Queer, passing it off as “genius”, all of this financed by cash-loaded stuffed suits of the Officialdom of a society of nouveaux-riche former peasants who wouldn’t know a good design from tasteless garbage even if it hit them like a ton of bricks.
This calls for pitchforks and torches demonstrations by an outraged proletariat. Expel these foreigners!
When someone is perception is astute, it does not matter whether the town butcher said it or the kid next door. The article’s author makes valid critical points as did the commentary in the other link.
Libeskind has little taste and sense of the human element (scale) in projects like this one, resulting in something that is as dehumanizing in effect as the lego tombstones of Pundang and elsewhere, only cost more and are reflect more light. As far as I am concerned, the guy is more like the Jon Huer of design. ;o)
Consider *this* design effort and note how much nicer and inspired — and smaller — it is to this proposed catastrophe above.
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