© Lorenzo Cotti . Pubblicata il 12 Dicembre 2008.

1. introduction. Korea during last decades has been in a state of a constant improvement. Some consequences of its rapidity are evolutions that can’t be deeply rooted in territory. What arises instead, offers low social and urban quality.

© Lorenzo Cotti . Pubblicata il 12 Dicembre 2008.

The new urban area in Incheon is at the same risk: new settlement that arises in a landscape previously undefined in urban categories is an act of scattering pieces on the chess board. What comes as a result is a structure of clots, and as for clots – of low quality.

An effort to keep the morphology of future settlement flexible recourse to create a green space in the central zone and to built a tower that will become a social-urban symbol from the one and reference to the world on the other hand. It is to make the slogan UP! Up! Belvedere! real. For that the city tower has to be a belvedere not only for one who’s looking from, but for one who’s looking at and who’s living his or her live in its shadow as well.

Our idea takes in consideration the design guidelines in a specific way. Instead of walling the site off with ramps of underground roadway, our project explores all main axis and, first and foremost, it integrates the surroundings and proposes strong elements that could became future urban facts. As a result of re-configuration of the mobility system not only both sides of the park long the central lake are united, but also the edges of the green area are no edges anymore, they become the green sides of the streets. In doing so the main park of Cheongna becomes the beating heart of the city not only in consequence of its central position. As a complex system of urban and social relations and a center of modality, it works as an urban machine, but not the cruel one and anonymous in its monumentality. It gives place and space for identity to be found by new urban community in previously heart-less city.

Otherwise the 450 m high tower in the crossing point of two axes, surrounded by green multifunctional area and reflecting itself in the water seems to be exclusively an arrival point, a ymbol of its own, but not the part of the city.

As far as we are concerned, in the project for Cheongna the idea of the city center, its very heart, was lost. The future of the city would be that of falling apart in two cities separated by green area of weekend activity. Our intervention looks for bringing the concept of city center back to Cheongna, so even if the city is the Window Open to the World, it will still became a city.

2. TAS – from urban structure to urban place

The tower itself is made of sky more than walls and its lightness and nimbleness arise in TAS-The Aerial Square. It is an urban space, a place that will be open for all urban activities. The central area is no more its characteristic

In such a space the tower, following the words by Edmund Bacon, is precisely determined by design forces impinging on the site from the outside, rather than being arbitrary placement related only to the site itself. The tower and TAS define the urban structure and serve as visual linkage between both pedestrian and transport systems. The Aerial Square is not a green distinction between residential and financial part, it is a place of meeting and mixing both of these. It is not a master plan of unspecific guidelines, it is an effort to re-define the spirit of Cheongna through strong choises. For that the all the zone of Cheongna central park was recomposed. The fulcrum of the space is still the tower, but it is wrapped within symbolic arms of a square. Elevated square made of air, water and ground. Over and through those you go to work and affairs, you live days of your life as well as of your holidays, you go to the station or to meet your friends in the main plaza in front of the tower, you walk around and through the magic square in the shadows and lights, you listen the great cascade falling down the wall in the shape of the ear, you take e ferry or a small boat to go to the bamboo island, you go to the very peak of the tower to reach the sky…

It is a concept à rebour – a concept of borders that define but not divide spaces, of crossing point designed to stay in, a concept that passes from a view-point to the point of view.

All functions interact and work together in a fertile way: the tower, the lake, different belvederes on different levels, infrastructures for visitors and inhabitants, all kinds of mobility… the landscape of the city in all its dynamic and urban beauty.

3 tower and its architecture

As written above the tower is made of sky more than walls. For that the constructive character of the building is to bring lightness to the structure. Following the conceptual/typological approach the tower is not only a form of a skyscraper, pointing the sky, but it is an element of urban typology even before it is considered a shelter. Of course there are some people inside the structure, going in and out, up and down, as well as in San Carlo of Arona and the Statue of Liberty of New York.

Naturally the idea of the tower is always at the end the one of giving a shelter and hospitality. Guests are virus and enzymes: belvederes as well as auditorium, bars, restaurants. Architecturally all this guests – functions remain intimately related inside the skeleton (as lungs and spleen, etc.). They all have some formal and structural independence on their own; they can be considered ephemeral and temporary constructions as well. While the main structure is very strong and has the strength of concrete and steel the one of the guests is light as wood, sheet of steel, glass, ...