INTRODUCTION
Cheonggyecheon means clean-water stream in South Korean. The restored stream extends 5.8 km, almost half than the original 11 km waterway route, flows from theJongno and Songdong districts of the city’s downtown area. It is composed of 22 bridges and is delivered with 120, tones of water every day and incorporates floodmitigation structures (Seoul Today, 2005). The restoration of the stream, which was once covered with concrete around 50 years ago as part of the government-ledindustrialisation efforts after the Korean war, is another step along the path of turning grey into a green city (Korean Herald, 2005). When South Korea was rising from theruins of war, it didn’t have the luxury of looking far into the future and caring about environmental and cultural issues. South Korea is now at a point where those issueshave become a priority. Before the restoration the Cheonggyecheon was a dead place, no sunlight, no wildlife and historical site buried beneath concrete. After therestoration more sunlight beams into the space with some wildlife such as fish and waterbirds returning to the stream and historical monuments resurrected through rebuiltrepresentations and placed in the limelight. The stream directly helps cool down the urban heat island effect by as much as 3.5 °C by transpiration from plants as well asreflecting light and heat from the water’s surface and indirectly by reducing the amount of cars which enter through by more than half.
THEORETICAL PROPOSITION
The Cheonggyecheon is a project which reverses the remoteness with city people and nature and provides users with the opportunity to use the space for relaxationand/or socializing. A similar project, the Rio Piedras Restoration Project in San Juan, Puerto Rico establishes a similar framework for healthy habitats, an opportunity tocontrol flooding waters, and an innovative platform for future education and research (Tamir, 2007). Over the past 40 years, the Rio Piedras watershed in San Juan hasbeen influenced by population growth, development, and conversion of farm land into industrial zones, in much the same history line as the Cheonggyecheon.
DESIGN GENERATION STRATEGIES
Arguably the Soul purpose of the project in was to increase tourism into Seoul while making the city a more desirable city to visit in South Korea. The secondary reasonfor the project is to provide citizens with a naturalistic parkland type of open space.
Plaza 1
section is themed on purely an urban design by incorporating minimalplantings and is attractively well illuminated to promote evening usage. This precinct was deemed urban due to its close proximity to Seoul’s metro district; it is sometimesused for entertainment events and important speeches. As the start of the stream, it seems to have been designed with a high level of aesthetics in mind, using cues fromthe colourful bright lighting from nearby lighting displays to adopt into a slightly subdued landscape application. The waterfall is the main focal point of this section, itmagnetises the viewer’s attention while suppressing the city sounds. The modern form of the plaza forms linkages with the modern theme of the precinct. The smooth flatsubstrate of this part of the stream encourages people to remove their shoes and embrace the cooling effect of flowing stream water. This close interaction with thestream and the user would seem to make people feel more connected with stream and potentially causes the user to more so appreciate the stream’s aqueous qualities.
Plaza 2
section is a combination of urban and semi natural; as the stream moves further away from the centre of the CBD into the more residential area it develops moreof a natural character which is a response to a slightly more openness to increased access to sunlight.
Plaza 3
section is the most natural of the three sections, itsaquatic plantings help improve stream water quality whilst creating a more natural ecosystem for aquatic life. As well as providing ecological function the greening of thissection provides residents with more naturally soothing stream location compared to a more urban-centric theme.
CULTURAL CONTEXTS
Seoul is a highly dense city which is composed of high density living, many tall office buildings, retail shops and some factories. This high citizen density combined withan active evening social lifestyle greatly contributes to the generous illumination in the urban and semi urban sections of the Cheonggyecheon. Because this city isprimarily built upon an industrious nature, citizens generally do not have much appreciation for nature, especially the young generation. It would therefore beinappropriate to place the natural section in amongst Plaza 1 due to this conflict of affiliation. However, as the plants grow and expose themselves by default to users, theonce de-natured may begin to gain/regain appreciation for nature and ecosystems. South Korean culture is mostly oriented around work, as many having working days 8am to 8 pm Monday to Friday and sometimes Saturday. This work dominated lifestyle reflects the evening after work social dinning at socializing as well as the reducedtime for sport, recreational and hobby activities. Until recently, primary and secondary schooling involved students attending from 8 am to 9 pm Monday to Friday as wellas Saturday. The hard working nature of citizens therefore finds the Cheonggyecheon a very rewarding location to visit after such amounts of work or schooling.
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