Evolving Ecoscape

Title : Evolving Ecoscape_순천예술마당
Program : Cultural
Location : Suncheon-si, Jeollanam-do, Korea
Year : 2016

Cities evolve positively and negatively. Like many other cities in Korea, the city of Suncheon has lost its urban identity while undertaking its rapid urbanization. However, Suncheon Bay Garden has made a dramatic turning point in its urban history, helping to rebranding the city as a unique eco-city. The vast nature garden has not just been a tourist attraction but has been seminal in awakening the value of the natural environment, which in turn provides the city with an impetus to sustainable urban regeneration.

The Suncheon Art Platform aims to actualize a sustainable vision for the city promoted by Suncheon Bay Garden, in particular focusing on the regeneration of the Old City. The major concept of the proposal is to set out a new vibrant urban core enabling citizens and visitors to be engaged in various cultural and social activities in the Old City. To this end, the Suncheon Art Platform is designed to create a new ecological landscape, which evolves in harmony between architecture and nature. The minimized feature of the buildings becomes part of the existing landscape of the Old City, and the wire nets covering the buildings grow up as a living organism, which consequently leads to the birth of the ‘Evolving Ecoscape’. The Evolving Ecoscape, shaped by the Suncheon Art Platform, represents the changes and growth of the city, contributing to a well-balanced sustainable urban context visually and spatially in the 21st century.

The wire nets play a key role in forming the major spaces of the Suncheon Art Platform, which consists of several segmented masses based on the historic urban fabric of the Old City. The wire nets also compose an innovative environmental tool, which not only provides shade to rest under but also creates a natural surface with solar panels. Several segmented masses create different types of indoor and outdoor spaces connected by pedestrian and green areas in all directions. In particular, both an art center and visitor center are surrounded by different public spaces with easy accessibility, and the common ground as an open plaza, created by a gentle green slope with a sunken garden, is directly linked to the existing underground shopping mall. This integration has a crucial impact on the regeneration of the existing markets and communities by providing new socio-economic opportunities. The new Yeonja-ru stands out in a transparent silhouette, bringing the iconic feature of the historic city into the new cultural hub and symbolizing the new cultural identity of the city.

As a new cultural installation in the Old City, the proposal interprets the ideas and concepts of an eco-city highly inspired by Suncheon Bay Garden, fostering global agendas of sustainable urban regeneration simultaneously. The Evolving Ecoscape will be complete by accommodating various human activities whereby the proposal makes them occur. By doing this, the Suncheon Art Platform will become a center from which the human-oriented city of Suncheon is reborn, and will compete with other global eco-cities.