New polarity: Self -sufficient Natural City

 

a. Beyond Dichotomy

 In order to create new alternatives for future urban housing, it is necessary to overcome traditional dichotomy and to view modern cities as diverse models. The 'urban' and 'rural' consequently do not end up as a place definition in the opposite point, but rather the starting point of the polarity that can be redefined for a new type of urban model through the fundamental thought, ‘Meeting nature with people.’

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b. New struc tural combination be tween city and nature
 This design studio explores the new structural combination of the two areas on the border between city and nature. In the densely urbanized area, architectural gestures can be easily found, trying to make contacts with nature as much as possible such as a balcony, a courtyard. On the other hand, in local small towns, architectural typologies in high - density cities are repeated and fragmented and scattered, regardless of their natural characteristics, resources and potentials which were taken before formation of the city. When the existing city are expanded or local small towns are newly created, are there any possibilities which the natural resources and characteristics in those regions can be main criteria for making the spatial structure and character of the new urban area? What kind of conditions and values could be discussed for sustaining new urban area as the identity of ‘Natural city’?

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c. From the concept of ‘ecological city’ to the concept of ‘nature-daily life-sensible space’
 The existing concept of ecological city is mainly focused in energy, facility, materials and other engineering aspects in terms of global environmental management. This design studio do experiments for making new architectural typology and the alternative of spatial structure of city block to diverse layers of experiences of daily life that can be obtained from nature. The range of ‘nature’ to explore includes from natural elements such as topography / forest (wood) / water (river, stream) to natural phenomena (light, wind, rain, snow.) Students in the studio observe intuitively and sensibly and draw natural elements, way of combination among them, their form, etc, which varies according to regions. Conceptually students abstract and express those in their own language. They should take into account how spatial, morphological concept extracted from nature could make relations with realization of rich daily life and proposal of new complexity of future housing and future industry.

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d. Self-sufficient Natural City
 To sustain its envisioned self-sufficiency target, what kind of prosperous production system should ‘Natural city’ takes? Located at the division line between the urban zone and the green area, could the site redefine a long lost relationship between the city and its sustaining counterpart: agriculture? Can we envision a new and unique metropolitan space, a prototype, which is able to re-qualify the relationship between the city and its periphery?

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