2012 Deoksugung Palace Square Project in Seoul, Korea

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If we are to discuss squares in Korea, any Korean would easily remember the Seoul City Hall square. The Seoul City Hall square isn’t just a space where citizens come to relax nor is it just an open market, it carries with it a rich history as well. It has formed in the past the theatre for pro-democracy, freedom and civil rights movements a continues to host these kinds of movements till date.

The 9th DOCOMOMO Korean Design Competition 2012 made references to the city hall but the main focus was on the Deoksugung palace which forms a part of the square. The competition guided the participants to suggest ideas about the contents of the palace. However, we had to assert that the theme and presentation were not to be restricted to any physical or thematic boundaries both in the presentation or the briefing on the competition.

Original area of the Deoksugung palace before its right part was destroyed

The Deoksugung palace is a walled compound of palaces in Seoul that was inhabited by members of Korea’s royal family during the Joseon monarchy until colonial period around the turn of the 20th century. It is one of the "Five Grand Palaces" built by the kings of the Joseon Dynasty. And in 1897, after the incident when Emperor Gojong took refuge in the Russian legation, he returned to this place as the official palace.

It was in the Deoksugung that Emperor Gojong signed the unequal treaties as king of Korea as well as the place of his confinement when his wife, Queen Min, was assassinated by Japan. This is the place he sacrificed to retrieve the depredated country.

Photo of the crowd in the square for the April Revolution, 1960 / Photo of the today’s Seoul City Hall square, 2011

Our research involved going down memory lane to relive the meaning of his actions, trying to understand them and relating it to this place. To capture the significance of our study, we tagged our project; "Restoration from the Seoul City Hall square to the Square of Deoksugung Palace" (the building of the Seoul City Hall was constructed by Japan to colonize the Joseon Dynasty).

Map of the old urban structure of Seoul

Figure-ground plan with the project

In history, the square of the palace formed the venue for many national and civil events and it still serves the same purpose today. The changing of the Royal guard is a very popular event for many visitors. Portions of the square is occupied by a traffic road which leads out of it.

Before starting the project, we needed to understand the method of the construction of the square and the treatise written by Camillo Sitte: "City Planning According to Artistic Principles" proved invaluable in this regard.

In this book, he tried to find the relationship between the elements needed to build urban structures as well as the forms and resulting composition of these structures. He appealed for the need to identify the significant places of culture and pattern of habitation in the city. According to his analysis, the square is a type of the closed square by walls in the traditional city, generally called "Stone City".

Project for Alexander Plaza in Berlin, Mies van der Rohe, 1928 / IIT Master Plan in Chicago, Illinois, Mies
van der Rohe, 1946 / Chandigarh master plan, Le Corbusier, 1956 / Studies of Medieval Plazas, Camillo
Sitte, 1889

Through the 19th century when the experimental research of new methods to build the city taking into consideration nature was actively being pursued, the efforts of two modern architects on how to make urban places to be in tandem with nature stood out as showing progressive results. The two works includes the projects: Le Corbusier's "Chandigarh plan" and Mies' "IIT Master Plan". Looking at these projects, we can see that big collective places are defined by the relationship established between independent buildings.

Furthermore, there is an exceptional example of Mies, it is the project for Alexander Plaza in Berlin. The plaza in this project seems to take the traditional way that we saw in the Sitte's studies. Its form isn't dependent on the situation created by the traffic circle, instead Mies proposed for strategically placed freestanding buildings in his designs allowing each building to clearly express its own structure.

Perspective view of the project

We approached the idea of the Seoul City Hall Square with insights from these successive studies. The project is about setting out a special theme on which it is possible to measure the culture of modern cities from two points of view: the civil will to build new places on one hand, and the capacity to define a typology of new public place on the other.

We had also the important issue of considering the reality in terms of situation of the modern Seoul City Hall square; the fact that its main front is in front of the city hall building. I’ve been interested in the question: "do plazas/squares have their main front?" This should not be surprising as history is replete with many famous and beautiful squares with main fronts. These fronts served as stages for important events in the past from human sacrifices to demonstrations and today, they host events such as concerts etc.

I have always held the view that the spaces in squares later on become like theatres, I confirmed the presence of the main front of the square to be in line with my postulations. Usually, when an event is held in the square, a main background or a stage tends to be installed towards the main front of the square whether consciously or unconsciously.

Painting of “The Ideal City”, Fra Carnevale, 1484 / Square on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, Michelangelo, 1546 / Square of pope Pius II in Pienza, Bernardo Rossellino, 1462

With this knowledge, the aim of the project became clearer. We thus, researched architectural solutions to transform the main front of the square.

The first is the plan announced by Seoul Metropolitan Government. The director of the headquarters of urban traffic centre of Seoul announced that "In order to improve road traffic by 2020, there are plans to build a total length of 149 km of private underground road networks for small cars". Upon completion of the underground project, the ground of the park would only be accessible by cyclists and pedestrians while portions of it will be converted to green spaces. The fence of the Deoksugung Palace will then be opened so that the green space of the plaza will be connected with nature in the courtyard of the palace.

Perspective view aside the new pavilion

Traditionally, public buildings were used to construct squares and ultimately to design the order and structure of the city. As you can see in the square of pope Pius II in Pienza, the cathedral, the town hall, the administrative building and the palaces made up the square. We had to revisit the relationship between nature and modern public spaces in the construction of the city.

Diagram of the inserting of the new pavilion / Diagram of the old main front of the plaza, of the new main front of the plaza

We suggested a building type known as a pavilion. I remember the views expressed by Louis Kahn on archetypes of this type of building. According to Khan, "The Agora, for instance, was a place of happening [...] the Agora, the Stoa was made most marvelously [...] No partitions, just columns, just protection. Things grew in it. Shops became. People met to meet there. [...] It's shaded" (Louis Kahn, 1969).

The designs of pavilions vary according to the place where it rises. However, the general structure consists of an open space building constructed with only two architectural elements. The 76 columns (40x40cm, 12m height) are laid out at intervals of 5 meters (3 rows, 19 columns) and supported by a thin roof (15x90m).

This type of structure is not new to Asian architecture. In front of this pavilion, Koreans will feel the same sensations as if they were in front of Byeongsan Seowon (Pavilion school in Korea, 1614) or Gyeonghoeru (Pavilion in Gyeongbokgung palace in Korea, 1395).

Volumetric master plan before the project / Volumetric master plan after the project

Through the pavilion, the space of the square expands to the courtyard of the palace and accommodates nature: the lake and green spaces of the palace.

Its form opens to all directions but adherence to the two architectural elements ensures that it maintains the distinct recognisable form of a pavilion.

This pavilion will serve multiple purposes as a picnic spot, venue for collective social engagements, as well as for exhibitions. Above all, the pavilion will serve to give the square its recognisable form as it will form the main front of the square in itself.

Pespective view of the Festival hall on the German island of Rugen, Heinrich Tessenow, 1936 / Photo of Gyeonghoeru (Pavilion in Gyeongbokgung palace in Korea, 1395)