The mining landscape at Cospuden, transformed into a mining memory landscape as a framework for development.
were shortly invited to visit Seoul, close to which a remarkable concept had been envisioned – ‘Paju Book City’. Along the edge of the Han River northwest of the South Korean capital, Seoul, before a distant prospect of mountains and close to the sea, the architects realised that here was a client that possessed a clear, if not fully defined vision of what a 21st-century technologically based city might comprise. When a man rides for a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. … Isidora is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed of city contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age … Desires are already memories. Italo Calvino3 In the spring of 1999, Florian Beigel and ARU were commissioned to design the urban landscape plan of Paju Book City. The ARU plan was used as the basis of the Paju
Design Guide, produced in August 1999 by a team comprising the architects Seung H-Sang (co-ordinator), Florian Beigel, Min Hyun-sik, Kim Jong Kyu and Kim Young-joon. A range of architectural typologies emerged. One extended below the defining Freedom Expressway (formerly the Ja Yoo motorway and today also a major 10-metre/32-foot high flood barrier along the east bank of the river). Called Highway Shadow, this was to contain mostly mass-production facilities such as print shops, publishing houses and factories, buildings, restricted to two storeys, that would have green roofs and would not exceed the height of the highway. Another architectural type was dubbed Bookshelf units – a series of ‘chopped volumes’, yet giving the working inhabitants unrestricted views of the Han River and the Simhak Mountain. Other poetic concepts included Stone units, with massive forms akin to geological rock, and a ‘Canal Loft’ running out rhythmic lines along the length of the waterway. An Urban Island would be recognised from the roads surrounding all four sides of the site. This
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