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Seoul, South Korea
It will come to me later like a space invader, and I won’t be able to get it out of my head
It’s not too far from Osaka to Seoul, but it still takes a long time to get there. From my hotel a block north of the canal in Dotonbori, I started by walking to the Namba Nankai Railway Station, boarding a Rapi:tldier protected Rapi:t train, clearing security and customs, killing some time at the lounge (primarily for the view and the free food), boarding a Korean Air flight, enjoying their super fun safety video, landing at Incheon, walking (a long way) to, and then clearing, customs, stopping by an ATM for some Won, getting a ticket for the AREX train and a T-Money card, riding the AREX train to Seoul Station, walking (a long way) underground to the subway, taking the 1 line to Dongdaemun and then walking just a few blocks to the next hotel. And before you know it, you’re in Seoul
This was my first time to Seoul and my first time to South Korea, and it took me a while to really grasp its size and what was where. It also took me a long time when I was planning the trip to even settle on a hotel, but finally what made me decide wasn’t the hotel itself as much as what was nearby. Dongdaemun is home to Dongdaemun Design Plaza, a spectacular building designed by Zaha Hadid, and perhaps the most Zaha Hadid-ish of any Zaha Hadid building ever built. Even though the hotel was technically a little closer to the Dongdaemun subway station, I went out of my way every day to use the Dongdaemun Design Plaza subway station instead. Every time I left my hotel or arrived back, I found myself walking to, around and through this building, marveling at its spaces as I walked underneath or over its bridges, and experiencing it in the rain, in early morning, at night, in every possible weather and lighting condition, and every time I saw it I found myself loving it even more.
Not only did I weave through the building every day on my way to other places, I also spent some time inside on a terrific English language architecture tour. The tour was interior only because of the weather, for the first time this trip it rained a little- nothing too bad, just some showers that snuck into Seoul from the forbidden north.
Inside and outside Dongdaemun Design Plaza are continuous pathways that reveal the building and connect its programmatic elements. There is a large free lounge/library space, a cafe and shop, a kids playground, a rooftop garden and distinct museum galleries throughout. And every turn on those exterior and interior paths revealed more surprises and more looks into wonderfully sculpted spaces.
It turns out that I visited Seoul on a national holiday called Chuseok, which could kind of be described as Korean Thanksgiving, emphasizing the “kind of” part of this sentence. There are good things and bad things about visiting a world capital city during a national holiday, but I’ll stay positive and focus on the good. For example, most places (and even the subway) were busy but not too busy, so that’s good. And It’s not like the entire city was empty or shut down, but I did switch to trying to focus on visiting buildings and sites on Chuseok that I planned to see from the outside only. Of course that doesn’t explain this Chuseok photo, inside the busy but not too busy Starfield Library, part of a mall but at least a really nice part of a mall.
Outside of the Starfield Library and the mall are a hard to miss sculpture of the giant disembodied hands of PSY where even on a pretty quiet Chuseok morning, a steady stream of people lined up to pose for pictures as Gangnam Style played in a neverending loop. Op-op-op-op oppa Gangnam style indeed.
Seoul is big. Real big. And getting around takes some effort. When I was in Osaka (and I was like just in Osaka), I used Apple Maps or Google Maps to get around, but once you’re in Seoul, you’ll soon realize that all the warnings were right and that Apple Maps and Google Maps are pretty much useless in South Korea. Instead you need to use something called Naver Maps, which is difficult with walking directions but spot on for subways. I soon found myself dependent on it, taking the (generally) easy to use subways from destination to destination, only popping my head above ground when I finally got to whatever destination and exit number Naver told me to. This gave me an introduction to Seoul that was incomplete, it felt like I was visiting islands in the city instead of the actual city. Luckily there was an anecdote to all this subway hopping, and it started with Seoullo 7017.
Seoullo 7017 is not from 4,994 years in the future, but instead uses an abandoned flyover ramp (from 1970) that was opened as a connecting pedestrian path six years ago (in 2017). The pathway is High Line-ish (and far more High Line-ish than the terribly named The 606 in Chicago) and a quite pleasant way to actually see the city as I moved through it and as I moved above it.
We’re going to take the theme of Seoullo 7017 but this time we’re going to take it up like a thousand notches. This is Cheonggyecheon Stream, which, along with Zaha Hadid’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza, was tied for my very favorite place in Seoul. This used to be covered with a highway, and now it’s a terrific linear park sunk a level below the street. More than once (ok, twice) I ignored what Naver Maps said and happily walked the (just under) two mile section from its start and then all the way to Dongdaemun, enjoying every minute.
Next up we’re back on the Naver Maps app, heading underground and suddenly popping up somewhere new, this time on a pleasant street where the Starbucks has a plaque on it claiming it’s the first Starbucks in Korea. But thankfully we’re not here this time to research old Starbucks (or is thar Starbuckses) or any other overpriced, parasitic retail organizations and instead we’re here on Chuseok to see EWHA Women’s College. An architectural highlight of Seoul, it was designed by Dominique Perrault and is impossible to photograph. Sure, it may be hard to argue that something is impossible to photograph in text right above a photograph of that same impossible to photograph thing, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.
What makes EWHA impossible to photograph is what makes it wonderful. It is a massive building on a hill, or, more accurately, a massive building that is a hill. Right through the center of the artificial hill is an artificial, glass walled canyon, with a ramp going down on one side and a steep gathering stair on the other. It’s a terrific building to experience in person, but in a photograph, you only really get part of the picture, although I guess part of the picture is better than nothing.
Our (somewhat) unintentional tour of Seoul contemporary architecture and urbanism continues with the Kukje Gallery, designed by one time PS1 Warm Up architect SO-IL. The building is wrapped in a chain link that somehow looked good, which in and of itself is a great achievement.
Just as I had not (specifically) planned to be in Seoul on Chuseok, I also had not (specifically) planned to be in Seoul during its architecture biennial, even though that is the kind of thing that I am sometimes known to do. The biennial had a theme of “Multi-Layered Land Use and Green Network,” and a lot of the installations were located in a park right in the middle of the city. Like a lot of biennials, the installations are interesting to look at but sometimes the reasoning behind them kind of takes away from enjoying them. So, with that in mind, like most of the Chuseok crowd, I just went along with it and (just like the teamLab Botanic Garden) tried again not to overthink things.
