SPACE July 2024 (No. 680)
View of ‘Alternative-City TAE JAE Forum – Connecting to a New World’ ©Kim Yusin
On June 4, Seoul National University hosted the ‘Alternative-City TAE JAE Forum – Connecting to a New World’. The concept of an ‘alternative-city’ is proposed as a solution to the overpopulation of large cities and the extinction crisis of small cities, referring to small but well-connected cities with robust infrastructure. The Seoul National University Department of Architecture & Architectural Engineering and TAE JAE FOUNDATION have been hosting the ‘Alternative-City Idea Contest’ and seminars since 2021, considering alternative-cities as a promising future city solution. They are also preparing to establish the ‘Future City Research Institute (tentative name)’. As part of the seminar, Peck Jongyoon (executive officer, NAVER Labs) was invited to the forum to explain NAVER Labs’ leading technologies in robotics, autonomous driving, and augmented reality, emphasising the essential ‘connection’ for building alternative-city infrastructure.
NAVER Labs is working on projects that integrate NAVER’s technologies into offline spaces. Technologies like the ‘Megacity- Scale Digital Twin’ and AI-based positioning technology ‘Visual Localization’ replicate real spaces to explore and expand their potential. In the recently completed NAVER 1784 (2022) and NAVER Data Center GAK Sejong (2023, coverd in SPACE No. 673), these technologies are actively used, allowing everyday experiences such as receiving deliveries from robots or riding autonomous shuttles. NAVER Labs aims to expand these technologies to the city scale, establishing the necessary infrastructure for smart cities. Based on the ‘Digital Twin’ platform project awarded by the Saudi Arabian government in 2023, they are also researching the possibility of introducing smart city technologies throughout Saudi Arabia.
