Sunday, 6 January 2008
2007 Chelsea Flower Show
Modern buildings in London
Photographs by Bo-Kyung in 2007 It was amazing to look around modern buildings in London. I felt I was in a new place because I have never seen that kind of places and I did not know even that area before I went there in 01 DEC 2007. It is very interesting to see modern buildings and places in London, actually, London is the historical and classical city to me. So I enjoyed that new view.
Landscape in Kew (with the classmates at the uni)
Photographs by Bo-Kyung in 2007 I went Kew gardens with classmates and tutors in 30 OCT 07. There is the exhibition of Henry Moore who is the internationally acclaimed sculptor. Compare with the landscape that I have seen in January and March of 2007, the place looked more green and sculptures had great harmony with nature in Kew.
-Kew garden's homepage:
http://www.kew.org/
선유도공원 [ Sunyudo Park, 仙遊島公園 ]
Photographs by Bo-Kyung in 2005 This park was established in 26 April 02.
It is a kind of ecological parks and there are many places that were remodelled with ecological plants on existent buildings which were used to be a part of the clean water reservoir in an island in Seoul. I like the design to make an ecological place with the vine on the pillars. And also the park was made without any demolition of the existent buildings. They made the place with ecological value between the artificial buildings and plants that were planted as a new plan.
Size: 110,400㎡
Seoul Forest Park
Photographs by Bo-Kyung in 2005There are one of biggest Parks in Seoul, where is the capital city of South Korea.
It is called 'Seoul Forest park'(1,156,498㎡)
The park was established during 28 DEC 03~ 18 June 05. The place is used by Seoul citizen and many visitors. It is a sort of public places in Korea, especially, I like the design of the fountain on the ground for children in spring and summer. It makes the atmosphere that people can enjoy and have fun together. When I visited there it was the busiest area in the park because it was very hot and humid in summer. At that time, I was inspired by that landscape. I think it is important and good status, if people do something livelily in the park. Based on this place, I designed the public space with the fountain on the ground into my project in semester 1.
-more information about Seoul forest park and many parks in Seoul is availiable here:
http://parks.seoul.go.kr/main/english/main.htm
The editorial about The Cheonggyecheon(before completion)
[Editorial]Downtown stream restoration
Seoul citizens, especially those living and working north of the Han River, will suffer worsened traffic congestion for the next three years until the Cheonggyecheon stream restoration project, which starts today, is complete. The city project to remove double decks of road built over the creek three decades ago means a devastating blow to the business of the thousands of shops lining both banks of the stream.
For those directly affected by the capital city's "quality of life" project, we have only one piece of advice: It's worth enduring. Also, we ask Mayor Lee Myung-bak, literally the architect of the $300 million project - it is probably unparalleled in world metropolises - to fully consider Cheonggyecheon merchants' livelihoods and to minimize their losses.
As for the capital's citizens, we suggest that they recall the difficulties they experienced when Seoul subway lines No. 1 and No. 2 were constructed. They run under Jongno and Euljiro, respectively. As engineers used the open cut method instead of boring underground, traffic on the two main streets was severely hampered and local shops suffered heavily for almost the entire 1970s. Now we cannot imagine Seoul without these and other important subway lines.
Many argue that Cheonggyecheon's restoration is a luxury, incomparable to the benefits of subway construction. While subways immediately and tangibly improved city life, sufficiently compensating people for years of suffering, the critics are asking what good the artificially restored 50-meter-wide and 30-centimeter-deep waterway will do.
Yes, Cheonggyecheon from 2006 onwards will hardly offer instant economic gains like, say, reduced traffic costs or a quick elimination of the development gap that divides the old city north of the Han River and the new city south of it. But the "re-creation of nature" along the 6-kilometer stretch in the capital city's very center, along with the construction of 20-odd bridges, restoration of many historical sites, fountains, public squares and promenades, all envisioned by City Hall, will certainly make Seoul a better place to live in.
Cheonggyecheon, known as a show case of Korean ingenuity because it is home to thousands of tool and hardware stores, has truly been one of Seoul's unique features largely because the area's type of commerce has not undergone the same modernization seen elsewhere in the city. One walking along the street - actually concrete slabs laid over the stream - will realize that the elevated road deterred the area's development; otherwise, it would have turned into a posh central business district with high-rises and various urban amenities.
The elevated road over Cheonggyecheon represented the national development drive of the early 70s. After three decades, the concrete structure poses a significant safety problem. The restored Cheonggyecheon, it is hoped, will symbolize public administrators' new endeavor to offer more space and facilities so citizens can relax amid the hectic city. 2003.07.01
-http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/The news about The Cheonggyecheon&Lee Myung-bak
Lee Myung Bak
By BRYAN WALSH
Back then, they called him the Bulldozer. As a driven young executive for Hyundai Construction in the 1970s and '80s, Lee Myung Bak helped build much of postwar South Korea, working with others to transform a bombed-out agrarian economy into one of the most dynamic industrialized nations in the world. He saw his brother and sister killed during the Korean War, and he hauled trash to pay for his university tuition, yet he rose to become CEO by age 35. Today, Lee is likely to be South Korea's next President.
But the rapid development that remade the nation and lifted millions like Lee out of poverty left lasting scars on South Korea. Nowhere are those wounds deeper than in the capital of Seoul, an unlovely city of 10 million that was dusty, polluted and congested by the time Lee ran for mayor in 2002.
For decades, those who lived in Seoul had simply sighed and survived their unlivable city. This was the deal, after all, for Asia's economic tigers — prosperity came at a cost of worsening pollution. A clean environment was considered an unaffordable, Western extravagance. But Lee had the courage — and the political smarts — to realize that for South Korea's newly affluent middle class, the deal needed renegotiating. "When the Korean economy was just trying to get back on its feet after the war, having parks was a luxury," the 65-year-old Lee told TIME last year. "But now we try to achieve a balance between function and the environment, and we try to put the environment first."
So the Bulldozer went green — and in dramatic fashion. He told the city's people that he would tear out the jam-packed elevated highway that ran through the heart of Seoul and restore the buried Cheonggyecheon stream — a foul urban waterway that Lee himself had helped pave over in the 1960s. His opponents insisted that the plan would cause traffic chaos and cost billions, but the voters elected Lee. Three years later, Cheonggyecheon was reborn, an environmentally friendly civic jewel that has changed the face of Seoul. More quietly, Lee also revamped the city's transportation system, adding clean rapid-transit buses. But his lasting accomplishment was in changing the Asian political dynamic, showing that environmentalism can go hand in hand with development.
-TIME
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1663317_1663319_1669884,00.html
Saturday, 5 January 2008
The night view of the Cheonggyecheon
Just click and look at the scenery for a moment.
Link: