Transforming borderline into space, ‘Hongje Yuyeon (流緣)’
When I was in school, I attended an interesting design workshop on the topic of borderlines. If you look at a map from a macro perspective, long lines such as rivers, railways, roads, and bridges are boundaries that divide districts. However, if you look closely, the theme is that borders can also be used as space. However, our society does not recognize boundaries as spaces, so we do not utilize them well. The theme of this workshop was ‘How can a border become a space?’
Like in the movies 'Being John Malkovich' or 'Old Boy', if you press two elevator floor buttons at the same time, a hidden space appears at the border of the two floors.
After visiting 'Hongje Yuyeon', I felt that it was a really interesting and meaningful attempt. It was good to restore the waterway that had been blocked by the Eugene Shopping Center that was blocking Hongje Stream, but more than anything, planning the restored road as a public art space seemed like a truly ingenious idea.
For reference, Eugene Shopping Center, located above Hongjecheon, is a building with a very interesting history. This building was built at a time when military tensions between North and South Korea were at their peak (1960s), and it was built for military purposes on a route through which North Korea could invade the center of Seoul. Therefore, the architectural module was planned as a tank module that could accommodate one tank between columns, rather than a module centered on parking vehicles.
Moreover, during the construction of the inner ring overpass in 1995, one side of the building was cut off as it interfered with the high-rise part of the Eugene Shopping Center, and now the building has a strange shape that overlaps the inner circle overpass.
Hongje Yuyeon gives the feeling of entering a cave, and most installation art works utilize the surrounding environment to utilize darkness, light, and water. The image below is a work called ‘Hide’ by ‘Team Cowork’. Although the space where it is displayed is dark, this work creates an atmosphere where light shines through a dense forest path in the middle of the day.
I believe that the attempt to recreate a dark, smelly space that has been abandoned for a long time into a wonderful space for Seoul citizens is itself a great public project, and I hope that such attempts will continue to occur.
As mentioned at the beginning, if we could look at the thickness of the borderline from a slightly different perspective, I believe that it can become a new place as a medium connecting the two regions, rather than as a literal border dividing the two regions.
Even though this project goes against the current mayor of Seoul's policy of removing all traces of the past and building clean new buildings, I believe that if these attempts continue despite difficult conditions, Seoul will become a more romantic and wonderful city.
Lastly, Hongje Yuyeon is open to anyone and admission is free. The exhibition runs from 10 am to 10 pm.
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