A Family of Landscapes: LH Daejang Town Masterplan
| Location: | Daejang, South Korea |
|---|---|
| Status: | Honourable Mention, Competition 3rd Place |
| Date: | 2020 |
| With: | SAC International |
Bucheon-Daejang area, located within the (former?) greenbelt of Seoul, is surrounded by diverse landscapes. Mountains to the south. Agricultural fields to the north. Gulpo creek to its east, (and several smaller creeks running through it). Landscapes define the experience of the site.
The new town should be conceived as an articulation of (rather than erasure of) existing landscape, securing and strengthening its ecological function and fostering the creation of human communities within it. Creating a city that enhances biodiversity, and ecological strength of the landscape, will also foster a new kind of resilient human community.
Our proposal creates a hierarchy of landscapes, ranging from big nature corridors that perform the most important ecological and hydrological functions, active corridors containing sports fields, schools, and urban agriculture, ecological neighbourhood streetscapes, which combine transportation and ecological infrastructure, to intimate communal courtyards and pocket spaces.
The scale of landscape relates to the scale of the human community. The big nature serves the entire Bucheon-Daejang town. Each active corridor serves one district. Ecological streets serve a neighbourhood, and courtyards are shared with one’s immediate neighbours.
At each scale/layer/level the landscapes perform an ecological and hydrological function, a productive function - providing food, clean air, energy and carbon sequestration, they provide a connection to nature. By foregrounding the ecological, productive, and natural processes, the project also fosters new kinds of connections between the people and creates new resilient communities.
As one traverses outward from the apartment unit, the unit of engagement expands from one’s family, then to a collection of families, neighbours, who share a courtyard, to an entire neighbourhood that is a collective of courtyards. Multiple neighbourhoods comprise a district, sharing an Active Corridor. Finally, the Big Nature corridors are shared by the entire community of Bucheon-Daejang.
The hierarchy of landscapes is akin to a biological family, with each layer setting the stage for the next. It marks a continuum and mirrors the passage of a human's journey into and with the world. The innermost section, the Courtyards, embodies a sense of intimacy, enclosure and safety like an embrace as if to provide a shelter for an infant to begin the early steps into the world. The neighbourhood is a familiar and safe world for a child. While active corridors at the heart of each district facilitate diverse activities for young adults. Finally, the forests and creeks in the big nature corridors are like a wise mature adult.
As the landscape expands and opens up its physical presence, it breathes energy into the human engagement with the world as individuals and as a community, first with one's family, then with a neighbourhood, a community, then the world.
“Family of Landscapes” concept diagram
Masterplan
Masterplan morphology diagrams
Active corridor
“Big Nature” Corridor at SBRT Node
Neighbourhood square in Pilot Village
Ecological promenade and commercial zone section
Ecological promenade and commercial zone plan
Ecological promenade and commercial zone View