Design jury 10-11-2011

Sketch of walls and irrigation pools forming rooms.

Design sketch forming a series of water gardens with a relation to soswaewon

Perspective across the valley

1:200 plan

Design sketch of first water garden. working out the threshold between the existing garden wall and new, and relation to lower pavilion.

Design sketch of upper water garden, looking towards upper pavilion.

View towards upper pavilion from water tower

New guesthouses and water tower

 

1:200 Site cross section

1:200 upper garden cross section

 

 

water as tie between city and landscape

The use of water in Soswaewon is majestic. The river is a line of symmetry in the garden. The river is the meeting joint between the mountains. Water is the most important threshold between urbanity and landscape in Korea. In the lowlands the irrigation channels form the agricultural grid, on the slopes; terraces. Irrigation forms a city structure in an un-urbanised landscape. This urban rug has a sense of place. The irrigation channels and the edges of fields are like contour lines on a geological map. They also look like a template of a city.

If the landscape and the city share this structure, Could irrigation be the ‘tie’ between city and landscape?

view out the window on train ride between andong and daegu

At Soswaewon I would like to form a city structure ‘a wall’ as an irrigation channel. This wall uses the principals of those in the garden. And ties concepts of city and landscape infrastructure. To view the garden as a city plan offers the chance to see the role of water, and of the wall, with more clarity. The water as the landscape element and the wall as the man made.

maps of soswaewon and seoul

The water mediates the city and landscape. The garden heightens the experience of the water by manipulating it into ponds and channels. The wall forms landscape rooms within nature, it never closes off nature completely, like the mountains in the plan of Seoul. The site of the project; the clearing opposite the garden, has two clear conditions for the new wall to mediate: The verticality of the bamboo forest and the clearing. The site has the qualities of an urban edge.

edge retaining wall

To form the irrigation garden I will need to source the water, this suggested the concept of a retaining wall that holds up the landscape and forms a collection channel.

1:500 existing site model, looking towards soswaewon garden

1:500 existing site model, view up valley

Sketch of retaining wall around new garden 

sketch overlay of retaining wall, with irrigation garden at its end

concept drawing of wall as spine between mountains and agriculture

The idea of Wall as spine

Channels laid into the mountain above feed into the wall. This water is collected and fed into the agricultural terraces below. The water is also sourced from the existing soswaewon stream as an overflow. The wall begins as a cast recess in the ground as the terraces drop down the valley, the wall emerges out the ground, a continious horizontal element. This feeds an irrigation pond at the end of the new garden.

mapping irrigation channels

New agricultural gardens

The wall encloses a new tea garden growing the famous ginseng tea. These forced plants require dark roofs to grow.

sketch of ginseng tea garden beginning of wall and roofed guestrooms 

looking down the hill at soswaewon. with new terraces

looking from above soswaewon back to wall and garden

Aerial view of the valley

the entrance route to soswaewon

plans: existing, wall, and agriculture 

 

 

River Moments

I would like to introduce the concept of the river moments into the new wall. The river path has many experiential moments. The conditioning between the natural and man made. It is important therefore that the wall has a permeability or series of stop moments to develop a sense of place.

‘ Interval is to do with our deepest feelings… those concerning territory. Without interval, our sense of self gets lost; we lack the space to mark out what is still ourself, our territory. Those tiny physical marks of pawprint, smell, known noises, known light patterns, known safe places, known places of enjoyable risk.’

A+P Smithson: The Charged void: Architecture p455

Alvaro Siza: Parish centre, matosinhos

The precedent above looks at the idea of the closed wall. There is a clear change in materiality between the upright structure (irrigation channel) and the infill.

Luigi Morretti: Casa del girasole

The idea of brickolage creates a permanance to the infil. Using this idea i can develop the void underneath an irrigation channel to form a retaining wall, with internal and interval space.

Bas Princen

This photo illustrates the idea of letting nature come through, this is a close logic to that in the existing garden. The walls rest on top of the topography.

 

a water garden

My initial ideas are concerned with a new wall. This new wall is to form an extension to soswaewon garden, a new city block of agriculture. From observations at paju, and in general throughout Korea, it is clear that the most important wall structure in the landscape is the irrigation channel. I wonder if i can develop the concept of topographical and boundary wall into a new series of irrigation channels. The channel on top of the wall, and the undercroft the path space. This could be clad in paper, to give a more inclosed spacial experience.

initial sketch for linear wall element

irrigation channel and gateways through walls

The wall can form a subtle path through the landscape, reacting to the existing topography of the site. The extension of this garden would be to the east of the existing garden in the small clearing where there are currently toilet facilities.

survey of the proposed site opposite the existing garden

The new irrigation wall would then lead to a water garden. Where a new pavilion or pavilions would sit. These could be guesthouse facilities.

plan for the water garden and run of the wall 

existing site condition

concept image for water garden and guesthouses looking towards soswaewon 

At the far edge of the lake here is the wall, the element that forms this new water garden and sloped terraces. This wall also wraps around to form the guest house. The buildings are seen as windows to the landscape, a frame from which to view the mountain in the distance, the new agricultural terraces, and soswaewon garden.

A window into the landscape. Jang min seung

view from above soswaewon garden looking at crossing and water garden in distance

 

A new wall

I am interested in forming a new wall for the garden. I would like to use the principles of the walls at soswaewon both natural and man made. Using these I will try and integrate agriculture into the site. The existing facilities that face the garden, the toilets and accommodation, hinder the view to the surrounding landscape. This area could be a possible site for the project.

The gardens walls are very linear elements. They never enclose you inside a space; the landscape is drawn in as a feature. In a sense they are more of a route than a boundary.

The opening of the existing walls engages with the landscape near and far. It forms definition in the natural where before it was unclear. The garden uses the bamboo and the pine forest to form its walls as well as the mountains it opens out towards.

This photo by JoAnn Verburg shows the concept of the ephemeral wall. Using the natural elements it forms a route through the existing condition. Photographically this has been done by blurring the edges, i think this is an interesting concept for the new wall.

As part of the concept of the wall, I would like form any internal space within the wall element.

Alison & Peter Smithsons upper lawn pavilion

first thoughts

 

I am interested in the route of the river through the valley, the shapes and forms of nature around it. On my previous trip to soswaewon I walked the course of the river. From the top of the mountains it feeds the agricultural gardens and makes its way down into soswaewon garden. In the garden it cuts out the topography on which the walls and pavilions are constructed. Its run down into the valley takes it through the dense bamboo forest and out into the expansive terraces of rice paddies. Ending its journey in lake gwangju

There are a series of moments that the river experiences, the views of the mudeung mountains, to the deep shadows under the lower pavilion of soswaewon. I would like to bring a connection to these moments, through a walled garden path.

One of the key principals behind the garden is the walls. The terrace wall formed of dry stone creates the plinth on which the pavilions sit. And the topographic wall that sits on top of the natural land, forms thresholds between different spaces in the garden and nature. The bamboo is also a wall element forming a straight and dense edge to the garden. A walled garden is as enjoyable to walk around as it is to be within. By the integration of a new wall or a series of wall elements I would like to bring the experience of the full river path to the garden.

mapping the rivercourse of the baekrihyeongguk valley, ink drawing

1:1000 topographical plan, soswaewon garden. Ink drawing

soswaewon garden and its context, pencil drawing