I am captivated by the design of a dense city center for the municipality of Gwanggyo near Seoul, Korea. The conceptual design was created by MVRDV.
It is being called the The Gwanggyo Power Center and will consist of 200,000 m2 housing, 48,000 m2 offices, 200,000 m2 mix of culture, retail, leisure and education, 200,000 m2 parking and will house 77,000 people.
The planners say: “Every part of the program receives a terrace for outdoor life. Plants around the terraces are fed with a floor to floor circulation system to irrigate the plants. The roofs of the hills and the terraces are planted with box hedges creating a strong, recognizable, cohesive park. This vertical park will aim to improve the climate and ventilation, reduce energy and water usage.”
Hmmm…I love boxwood, but think that maybe this is going a bit too far (think of the smell! and what if box blight strikes!?!)….and I am not sure the actual quality of outdoor living is really as interesting as the pictures of the whole thing. Current time frames for construction are aiming for 2011, could be an interesting future destination.
What do you think?
I’ve always found yew or boxwoods to smell like cat pee. The whole complex would smell like my grandma’s carpet!
Looks like the architect visited Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
What’s old is new again.