The Seoul 100-year Masterplan Exhibition presents a master plan that envisions Seoul in 100 years to serve as a coordinate for the city’s urban development and long-term planning. Although the city was founded with the respect for its landscape and natural environment, for the past 100 years, Seoul has been built and shaped by development-oriented plans for urbanization. However, it is difficult to achieve the balance and harmony of a city that connects tradition with the present and future, and the city is still mired in short-term change, adding to the chaos. Today’s cities need new urban management systems, such as transportation systems using big data, parking lots, and public spaces. This calls for a shift towards highly efficient cities, which improve quality of life and ultimately lead to better use of nature and resources.

The Seoul 100-year Masterplan Exhibition presents a framework for an “eco-friendly high-density city of Seoul” that will have a single urban flow in 100 years by reconnecting the broken veins of Seoul’s unique geographical and physical situation: mountains, valleys, waterways, and wind roads. First, we categorized various conflicts that occur in each environment by type, focusing on the flow of mountains near urban centers and the flow of the Han River and its tributaries. Then, we looked at case studies and creative suggestions for each type of problem to see how they might be solved. In particular, we looked for ways to alleviate urban continuity disruptions and conflicts caused by sharp differences in floor area ratios based on local zoning, to organically connect natural and man-made urban spaces, and to create a natural progression in the height and form of urban buildings that largely follows the flow of the mountain. By presenting an eco-friendly, high-density, high-efficiency city connected to its surroundings by mountains, waterways, and wind roads, we would like to propose the city of Seoul to provide quality housing and life for its citizens.

The proposals presented in the Seoul 100-Year Master Plan Exhibition are not conceived as fixed, unchanging, and completed plans. Rather, they are conceived as plans with an organic and smooth structure that can flexibly cope with and complement the economic, social, and cultural changes that will occur in the future. Since it was started in the context of the biennale, it is impossible to create a specific plan for every part of Seoul. Furthermore, such a plan would not be flexible enough to adapt to future changes in the urban environment. Therefore, the master plan presented in this exhibition is composed of tangible proposals that can be changed gradually by establishing common values that Seoul should pursue in the next 100 years.

Nonetheless, the research and proposals of the participating architects presented in the exhibition can be an important source of data for sketching the 100-year master plan for Seoul as a whole. It is hoped that proposals from the perspective of architects and urban designers to identify actual locations, infrastructure, and buildings to examine problems and potentials and find creative solutions will serve as the basis for a long-term approach and organic master plan to complete Seoul with “land architecture, land urbanism.” We hope that it will be a useful proposal for shaping the future not only of Seoul but also of cities around the world.

Curator: Byoung Soo Cho
Venue: Seoul Hall of Urbanism & Architecture

Masterplan Research & Planning Team: Hyunbae Chang, Michele Maria Riva, Elina Zampetakis, Johanna Kleesattel
Assistant: Seokyeong An
Data Graphic Design: TO A T
Media Contents: rebel9