SPACE March 2026 (No. 700)
Sung Hong Kim, Seoul Urban Architecture: Rising from the Crushing Bowl, Park Books, 2026 /Image courtesy of Park Books
Seoul Urban Architecture: Rising from the Crushing Bowl, an English-language monograph by Sung Hong Kim (Professor Emeritus, University of Seoul), a figure who has long investigated the historical and urban contexts shaping the formation of Seoul, was published this past Jan. Situating architecture within the broader political and socio-economic changes in Korea, the book offers an in-depth analysis of the dialectical relationship between architecture and the city of Seoul. More specifically, it provides international readers with an interpretive lens through which to understand the unique historical layers and spatial specificity embedded within Seoul’s urban architectural fabric. Kim argues that Seoul was formed through a turbulent history marked by colonial rule, war, military coups, and dictatorship, in which ‘heterogeneous elements were not fused together but were instead crushed together amid the continuous collision of powerful and violent external forces.’ As a result, he suggests, Seoul has developed ‘like grains in a mortar that never fully merge into a single whole but leave behind residual fragments’, producing irregular and discontinuous architectural patterns.
The book begins with a historical survey of Seoul’s urban formation from the late fourteenth century through to the 1950s. It then examines the evolution of urban planning from the 1960s to the 2000s. It further traces how three generations of Korean architects redefined both the professional identity of the architect and architectural culture amid the rapidly changing conditions of the postwar period, and explores how Western neoclassical and modern architecture, introduced during the colonial era, intersected with and challenged traditional Korean architectural norms. Furthermore, the book offers an in-depth exploration of the constraints and practical challenges faced by contemporary Korean urban architects, as well as the inherent tensions between urban planning and architecture, while also presenting diverse examples from recent architectural practice in Korea.
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