Landscape Architecture: Landscape Architecture: - School of ...

The mining landscape at Cospuden, transformed into a mining memory landscape as a framework for development.
were shortly invited to visit Seoul, close to which a
remarkable concept had been envisioned – ‘Paju Book City’.
Along the edge of the Han River northwest of the South
Korean capital, Seoul, before a distant prospect of mountains
and close to the sea, the architects realised that here was a
client that possessed a clear, if not fully defined vision of what
a 21st-century technologically based city might comprise.
When a man rides for a long time through wild regions he feels the
desire for a city.
… Isidora is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The
dreamed of city contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora
in his old age … Desires are already memories.
Italo Calvino 3
In the spring of 1999, Florian Beigel and ARU were
commissioned to design the urban landscape plan of Paju
Book City. The ARU plan was used as the basis of the Paju
Design Guide, produced in August 1999 by a team comprising
the architects Seung H-Sang (co-ordinator), Florian Beigel, Min
Hyun-sik, Kim Jong Kyu and Kim Young-joon. A range of
architectural typologies emerged. One extended below the
defining Freedom Expressway (formerly the Ja Yoo motorway
and today also a major 10-metre/32-foot high flood barrier
along the east bank of the river). Called Highway Shadow, this
was to contain mostly mass-production facilities such as print
shops, publishing houses and factories, buildings, restricted to
two storeys, that would have green roofs and would not
exceed the height of the highway. Another architectural type
was dubbed Bookshelf units – a series of ‘chopped volumes’,
yet giving the working inhabitants unrestricted views of the
Han River and the Simhak Mountain. Other poetic concepts
included Stone units, with massive forms akin to geological
rock, and a ‘Canal Loft’ running out rhythmic lines along the
length of the waterway. An Urban Island would be recognised
from the roads surrounding all four sides of the site. This
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