Architecture And The Evolving “commons” – London And Seoul

About

The Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK) is proud to present Architecture and the Evolving “Commons” – London and Seoul, a seminar in partnership with the London Festival of Architecture, the forthcoming inaugural Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism
2017 (Artistic Directors — Hyungmin Pai and Alejandro Zaera Polo), SH Corporation, and the British Council.

The seminar takes place on Thursday 2 June from 4.00pm to 8.00pm at the KCCUK and is intended as a platform for exchange between some of the most influential practitioners from Seoul and London.

Divided into two sessions, each session focuses on one city and its community. This seminar is accompanied by an exhibition entitled Existing City/New Resource at the
KCCUK, which demonstrates the question of ‘recycling the city’ and the current and future initiatives being undertaken by the Seoul Metropolitan Government. The first session of the seminar will present an overview of the hybrid spaces of modern day Seoul that challenge the conventional notion of separated work, dwelling, recreation, and transportation spaces. It will also explore the way technologically driven urban interventions are being used to reorganise and reinvent communities in Korea. The second session will seek to demonstrate architecture’s relevance to London and its diverse communities, and discuss how community is at the heart of every successful development in the capital. In doing so, the programme explores the many ways that contemporary architectural projects are seeking to re-imagine the future.

Questions asked by the seminars will include: How do architectural and urban interventions reorganise and reinvent communities? How do these interventions become part of an evolving commons of making, sensing, recycling and sharing?

How does the production of the hybrid spaces challenge the conventional twentieth–century regime that separates work, dwelling, recreation, and transportation? What kind of role does technology play in these spatial practices? How does the rise of the new commons bring about a different understanding of production and community? How does this call for a new kind of architectural and urban practice?

By exploring the role of architecture and urbanism in this technological and politico-economic process, some of the critical practices in present London and Seoul are highlighted as new modes of spatial production that are reorganising and collapsing work, habitation, and play.

As such, the seminar will delve into the role of architecture and urbanism in today’s community, and some of the critical practices present in London and Seoul. Through their talks, presentations, discussions, screening, and Q&A session, the speakers will explore
and consider how architectural and urban practices can redefine our understanding of community.

SPEAKER S AND MODER ATOR S
(in alphabetical order)
John Hong: Director of International Studios, Seoul Lab 2017; Professor, Seoul National University
Indy Johar: Director, Architecture 00
Soik Jung: Director, Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism Division
Torange Khonsari and Andreas Lang: Directors, Public Works
Robert Mull: Professor, Beevor Mull Architects LLP
Lucy Musgrave: Director, Publica
Hyungmin Pai: Co-director, Seoul Biennale 2017; Professor, University of Seoul
Hae-Won Shin: Curator, Seoul Biennale 2017; Principal, lokaldesign