Spectacle Korea

Image and text, two elements which creates and give meaning to communications.
What has never been told is beyond history of communication. These elements has battle for centuries to conquer and prove themself as strongest elements of communication and information.

In the 21st century we have learned that Image has won this round. The age of mass information and communication dominated by series of images, produced to dictate and control our life on daily basis. Clothes we should wear, the best skin color and hairstyles, the kind of food we should consume, people we should choose to rule, journey we should take.

Image has prevail and South Korea is one of its agent. The movie and drama they show us, smartphones they made to connect people (but at the same time isolate people), music they offer, the kind of body and hair color we should use, cartoons that teach our children with Korean values.

And in the world dominated with meaningless choices of images, we are mere spectacle.

“Images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common strem, and the former unity of life is lost forever. Apprehended in a partial way, reality unfolds in a new generality as a pseudo-world apart, solely as an object of contemplation. The tendency toward the specialization of images-of-the world finds its highest expression in the world of the autonomous image, where deceit deceives itself. The spectacle in its generality is a concrete inversion of life, and, as such, the autonomous movement of non-life.” –Guy Debord / The Society of The Spectacle

South Korea and Tourism

Tourism has now became dominant subject in the world because of its role as country development catalyst, involving vast sums of money and millions of people. Every country is prospecting this sector, and so did south korea. South Korea considered one of developed countries busy promoting every single assets, human resource and space to be transformed into tourist spectacle, a mere tourist attraction.
Busan as the country porty city, yet second largest city in korea is also treated and developed as tourist destination.

Tourism issue is a double-edged sword: being one of country’s income source and potentially profitable business, but on the other hand distracting government as if forgetting their own citizen by busy taking care of the tourists.

Human and The Compliance of Traditional Basic Needs and Psychological Needs

Living expenses in south korea arises from time to time. People can’t live without shelter, they struggle, adjust, adapt, survive and they prevail. The low income or temporary citizen forming small houses, living squatters utilizing impossible space. Yes humans are incredible. The economic force increase the number of low class income citizen that keep growing by size, shaping unavoided slum area. as the side effect of every metropolis.

City has an issue of space caused by high number of urbanism which conclude to degradation of land. While people are optimizing land as dwellings, they forgot about their source of food.
More cities now becoming very dependent to rural areas where land aren’t scarce as if pointing the rural and suburban area to become their own food source. City began to lose its meaning and community, City is becoming a space to spend time and source, not creating any.

Money is the only thing we know as 21st century citizen of the world. Our life is about money. we work to get more money. To have money means to live. Exchanging money to be alive where we actually exchange money for food.

People are busy working to fulfill their needs and forget about enjoying their time, no more time for self actualization, art, and creativity.
Art is shaped in a spare time. Spare time is created when human’s basic needs are already fulfilled, so this is the issue of fulfilling the traditional list of basic needs: food, shelter and clothing.

Now money has already become our welfare parameter. People are consider poor when not having money, even though they already filled their basic needs or even their psychological needs (based on maslow theory).

In the top of maslow theory of needs is self actualization, this is where the creativity and art belongs.

“Human needs are a powerful source of explanation of human behavior and social interaction. All individuals have needs that they strive to satisfy, either by using the system[,] ‘acting on the fringes[,]’ or acting as a reformist or revolutionary. Given this condition, social systems must be responsive to individual needs, or be subject to instability and forced change (possibly through violence or conflict).” — Coate and Rosati, “Preface,” in The Power of Human Needs in World Society, ed. Roger A.Coate and Jerel A. Rosati, ix. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988.

People are born with the ability to survive, including developing/growing their own food. What food need to grow is soil and land. Any kind of compact city design is about living packed, one close to another in small space, to have more people live in there, but this scheme forget a very important thing: Forgetting the source of food and people’s potential to grow food.

We need a solid yet compact space, where we grow our meal, live, and has an eventful activity as self actualization. We start the development of future urban dwellings with a full stomach.

Concept :

Creating Prototype Idyllic Town

Synchronizing the briefs with issues of tourism, urban & agricultural development
We decide that this project doesn’t need more attractive space or creative space. We do not need to design more illusion, more statement that attraction and creativity can be designed nor should it become a program.

We decided that attraction and creativity should be triggered rather than born as another added value or program.

What is Idyllic?

It is known that a city is always a huge magnet to modern people to gain more money, living their moneyless life in village. City population increasing from time to time. Now government are optimizing every space into something that can support the city. Just like in Mulmangol, turning abandoned bunker site into creative space.

Creativity is a positive impact of the basic needs compliance. Food becomes important, a good design is where we can grow our own food

Mulmangol bunker site is next to a slum area with almost same size, 0.13 km2 area. That slum is packed with approximately 2400 person.
This space role is the starting point to cure the city, creating a self sustain urban area using 10 priciples of intelligent urbanism without forgetting food growing activity to create self sustain community :
1. balance with nature
2. balance with tradition
3. appropriate technology
4. convivialty
5. efficiency
6. human scale
The radius of development : 192 meter radius based on the table below
7. opportunity matrix
Intelligent urbanism promotes opportunities through access to:
a. Basic and primary education, skill development and knowledge about the urban world;
b. Basic health care, potable water, solid waste disposal and hygiene;
c. Urban facilities like storm drainage, street lights, roads and footpaths;
d. Recreation and entertainment;
e. Transport, energy, communications;
f. Public participation and debate;
g. Finance and investment mechanisms;
h. Land and/or built-up space where goods and services can be produced;
i. Rudimentary economic infrastructure;
j. Intelligent urbanism provides a wide range of zones, districts and precincts where activities and functions can occur without detracting from one another.
8. regional integration
9. balanced movement
10. institutional integrity

We’d like to cure the city by creating a cure chain development, starting with Mulmangol. the 1st step is moving the slum dwellers to mulmagol development, while curing the ex-slum area, 2nd to be cured area dwellers can be moved to the ex-slum that already cured, and then continue to the next area and so on.

The Bunker

The Bunker building existing is in the same level with the residential area around, creating connection, bridging the west and east urban development which seperated by the hill

the existing bunker elevation is used as origins of the development, transforming it as main axis and main grid of the development.

The Bunker will exhibits main programs for the area development: an addition of underground research facility to grow edible plants without sun and a city gallery commemorating the previous history and importance of bunker on South Korea past and invention gallery to show the latest invention or any kind of product invented by the community of this area.

The Bunker will also connect vertically and horzontally, reaching the surface of the hills and residential area above

The Building Coverage and Green Area

for feeding all the the dwellers in this area we need 60% of the site to be converted as farming area, considerable as permaculture farming

site area 0.13 km2 = 130,000 m2 = 2486.29 person

permaculture 1 acre = 4,047 m2 = 129 person

total dwelling in slump area next to the site 661 Buildings = 2,644 person
(assumtion: 1 building for 4 persons)

Dwellings

“The cure” for public settlement resides on the development of space and program for the land and architecture.
Rather than occupying and covering the land with dense setting, the architecture floats, leaving the land to be cultivated as source of growing their own food.

This program will trigger a self sustain community, pushing people to have more time. More time with their family, more time developing their own project, their own engineering project, craft hobby, more time to cultivate human mind and self actualization and trigger creativity alast!

The HUB

Human Settlements needs supporting facility such as basic healthcare facility, community center, and schools, but instead of placing the facility seperately, We centralize each program in a compact supporting facility building with multiple floors serving each programs independently but integrated and easily manageable.

The HUB will be placed on radius of 150 sqm, which is a very comfortable walking distance. The HUB will also be connected to transportation facility to serve the axist of previous bunker both vertically and horizontally, east and west, north and south.

Creative Creation

Creativity should be triggered, it should be experienced and inspired by true nature and culture of indigenious local environment rather than another series of visual representation or series of illusion manifest as unique programs and “attractive space”.

Managing sustainable development inspired by local agricultural inventions is more important, connecting, re-living collective memory of the bunker’s past is important, together, tommorow, it deifies creativity as a mere added value program and if designing and planning a creative and attractive space is creative, we’d rather creates, shapes the satyr of not a creative creation.