Productive Han-Ga-Ram

Client // Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism • Location // Seoul, Korea • Program // Visionary Urbanism • Status // Ideas Competition / 2022 • Team // Strange Works Studio, Emergent Studio, Terrain Work, MMK+, Axu Studio • Awards // Selected for Exhibition at 2023 Seoul Biennale

Productive Han-Ga-Ram reimagines the Han River as Seoul’s central public space by transforming its thirty bridges and its riverfronts into a collective green network. The existing bridges and the waterfronts will be gradually transformed into a productive and performative public infrastructure. This phased process will bring about a series of pedestrian-oriented platforms and spaces where energy is produced, and air and water are filtered. In addition to the continuous trails for walking, running, and biking, these madang spaces will also become multi-functional spaces that are integrated into rivers’ new soft edges that mitigate the effects of increasing floods. At the human scale, playgrounds, picnic areas, pools, trails, learning centers, restaurants, and cafes, provide opportunities for young and seniors to mingle share the river’s new spaces. On a larger scale, the bridges and riverfronts will be retrofitted into infrastructure that actively mitigates the impacts of the rapidly changing climate and water crisis, Productive Han-Ga-Ram proactively connects the people of Seoul to its immediate mountains and waters, it further connects the people to the waterbody that flows from the Tabaek Mountains to the Yellow River, generating a new collective identity for Seoul. Productive Han-Ga-Ram amplifies Han River’s ecological potential to trigger a series of sociopolitical transformations for Seoul’s next 100 years.