The site in Seoul’s Songhyeon neighborhood used to be a distant island in the city―but last fall, it arrived before the public in a new form as an urban park. Presented for the first time in a century under the name “Songhyeon Green Plaza” (Songhyeon Plaza), it is a place where multiple x-x-x-x-x-x-layers of urban, historical, and geographic connotations overlap, and it also serves as the main venue for the 4th Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. Accordingly, On-site Project envisions multifaceted experiences based on direct interactions with the public in an urban context, along with the particularities of an exhibition format situated in an outdoor park venue and the environmental changes associated with weather at the exhibition site. The On-site Project exhibition experiments with the spatial possibilities of Songhyeon Plaza, a setting located in an urban center.

The On-site Project proposes architectural devices for weaving the overall site together with the area around the venue, taking into consideration the natural phenomena of the Green Park along with the physical connections to the Thematic Exhibition’s “Sky Pavilion” and “Earth Pavilion” and the network of exhibitions within the site. The various types of pavilions presented during the Biennale will be a starting point in re-establishing the identity of the place through proactive encounters with the public, as they pose the question of what role the park is able to play as a time-limited setting open to the people for the next two years. For these pavilions, the special situation of being able to view natural scenes within the city (including the mountains of Bugaksan and Inwangsan) is a basis for encouraging a new awareness of the spatial nature of the open outdoor setting connected with the city. At the same time, it also serves to tie together the different routes that lead to other features in the areas: the Seoul Museum of Craft Art, the Samcheong and Insa-dong neighborhoods, and the Gyeongbokgung Palace complex.

Over the past decades, pavilions and follies have honored their roles as event venues and as architectural or artistic installations. In the case of the 4th Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, different connections are suggested between Songhyeon and the surrounding city, serving as guides to movement within and outside the site. In addition, they will play the part of “experiential nodes” as independent spaces. Visitors can also experience the Green Park in a different way as the individual sites make use of natural elements (the earth, sky, wind, etc.) along with various visual, perceptual, tactile, and cognitive elements associated with the city. This is an event: a piece of land, unveiled after 110 years, forming its first-ever relationship with the city around it by way of architectural devices, the pavilions.

Besides the role of the Songhyeon site as a park, another important consideration in providing a multifaceted experience within an open urban setting was the diversity of the “pavilion” medium. Historically, pavilions have been reflections of human society, economics, and culture, developing as they have performed various roles in terms of innovation, resistance, interaction, events, and cultural activities. Over the years, pavilions have been explored in various forms based on their structures, materials, architectural methods, and so forth. For the On-site Project three elements were emphasized in particular: construct-ability, spatial character, and immateriality.

The first of these, construct-ability, refers to the creation of fluid relationships between the physical structures that make up a city and the people who use them. The second, spatial character, involves infusing the city with unusual and unpredictable spatial qualities that stem from the characteristics of the pavilions’ materials. The last concerns the experience of an “urban sense”: in referring to this as “immateriality,” the emphasis was on the experience not simply of architectural elements (walls, columns, floors, etc.) but of a cognitive space that enlists our organs of vision, hearing, and other perceptions. These elements are a constellation of “gleaned human senses” experienced by people in public settings; they are the collective memory of Songhyeon-dong as a “neighborhood without memories.”

With the 4th Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism taking place at the Songhyeon site, “On-site project” has taken on a more critical role than ever before. This will be an opportunity to reflect on the role of pavilions as experimental structures in architecture and art over the past 25 or so years―and, most importantly, to contemplate the role of the first architectural structures in Songhyeon and their positive contributions in an urban context. The public can experience the pleasure of an everyday encounter with different x-x-x-x-x-x-layers of architectural devices, from the urban scale all the way down to street furniture. Through architectural experiments situated in the countless historical x-x-x-x-x-x-layers of Songhyeon as a neighborhood, this can be an exhibition where visitors are left experiencing a sense of place in their first encounter with the site.

Curator: Sara Kim
Venue: Songhyeon Green Plaza

Assistant Curator: Young Jae Park, Yong Jin Jo
Structural Engineer: Kwang-jae Yoon, GARAM Structural Engineering
Translation: Na Yeon Kim, Ji Yoon Park, Colin Mouat