What Happens When a Superficial Society Designs Buildings? [Part 2]

Yesterday, I began to explain the conundrum of Korean cities. Korea has recently been striving for cultural actualization and establishing the biggest cities as premiere tourist destinations. The Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) is an ideal case-study of this attitude's efficacy in the modern world.

Urban Bling

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The Design Plaza is a beautiful shell and pretty much just that in all other aspects, a shell. Despite ambitions to raise Korea's urban value to the world and over the next cultural hotspot, the project really had no meat to it. There were no nurtured institutional links or programs to meet the project's expectations. There were no foundations or institutions tasked with keeping it vibrant and engaged. The Dongdaemun Design Plaza, originally tasked to be the most innovative and diverse nexus of East Asia has become little more than a rentable convention center.

• Source: My Korean Diaries

Even today, the building and complex stands partially, sometimes even mostly empty. Every so often there will be a short traveling exhibition or conference by big name brands, but very few recurring and almost nothing in-house. The project hemorrhages state funds and more focus is put keeping it afloat than anything remotely innovative. This consequently has an enormous influence on the nature and viability of ongoing programs, opting for big-budget commercially-driven events. As it stands, the project is a city ornament.

Though, this isn't to say that any other cultural institutions around the world are much different in the financial respect. Every version of a city MoMa, each public collection or state library, and all franchises of the Guggenheim are fundamentally not profit-makers. What helps them stay afloat and sustain innovation-driven programs is not (only) the characteristics of the building, but the robust and forward-planning donor, grant, and other engaged support efforts.

A Need to Plan a Cultural Revolution

As they stand now, cultural destinations in Korea either require massive state funding (i.e. the National Korea Museum) or deep deep pockets (i.e. the Leeum collection/museum). In a country where charity and donorship are still an underdeveloped facet of society, all grand-scale creative ambitions rely on these two.

• Source: Travel Assets

One of the main weaknesses is the assumption that the building itself would embody success. It is magnificent, no doubt, and a metallic magnet for anyone disembarking from Incheon airport for the first time. Of course it would attract eyeballs and seduce all the premiere makers of the world. But a piece of infrastructure, especially one solely reliant on ephemeral creative activity, can never operate on an island no matter how impressive. The making of the building stimulated a number of design foundations and institutions to start, but without a robust base of existing activity, the design plaza adds onto the cultural tangle of Korea rather than navigate it. Korean cultural infrastructure is stuck in the chicken-and-egg conundrum and the DDP attempted poorly to be an over-invested shell.

• Source: Travel Past

Grassroots Vibrancy

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Back to the superficial nature of Korean society. It is without question that mainstream Korean society spends more effort on appearance and specs over substantive content and self-actualization. This means that the pristine roads of Korea will always be filled with expensive foreign cars and citizens draped in high fashion. We see this attitude scale up as well and Seoul has witnessed developments such as the Dongdaemun Design Plaza and Lotte Tower in the past decade. Visually, they are stunning. Internally, they are barren.

There is no escaping a stamp of a social attitude on built form and program. Korea's social fabric is oriented to produce individuals of high creative value, instead historically leaning towards group-thing and action. If the future of Korea's cultural identity will partially depend on these moments of infrastructural wonder, a rewoven fabric is needed to support the resonance of these place.

• Source: NeneJoayo

In my opinion, design has typically little to do with dictating an outcome. I say this as a trained architect and designer, knowing full well that intentions and aesthetics do not ensure a certain usage. The vibrancy of the New York MoMA or the London Tate is absolutely supported by its visual iconicism, but that precise quality that Korea envies emerges from an underlying dynamism and entrepreneurial spirit that fizzles on Korean ground.

Anyway, there's a bit to unpack so let me know your thoughts below!