On Dec. 25, 2018, the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) announced Gramdesign’s (Choi Yoonseok, Gardening friends, CoRe architects) ‘Vertical Gardening’ as the winner of the Donuimun Open Creative Village Vertical Garden Design Competition.
The winner, ‘Vertical Gardening’, proposed a prototype applicable not only the Donuimun Open Creative Village, but also to other types of buildings in the city. The vertical garden, which enables the choreography of diverse scenes through the selective application of different vegetation, has been planned as a project that can be touched, cared for and grown by citizens, rather than as an already completed project. The selection, which focused on the activity of gardening, does not limit itself to preliminary stages, by taking into account the processes for post-maintenance and knowledge accumulation needed to sustain the project. The horizontally connected vertical garden features visual continuity when seen from the outside, while establishing an internal continuing footpath.
The judges held the nomination’s potential for development in very high esteem. They said that it was ‘the most stable design that understood with great precision the initiative behind the competition and most accurately fit its aims’, adding that it was a ‘work that stood out for its refined design from the vegetation to be planted to maintenance, as well as its innovative attempts and efforts to minimise the load burden on the existing architecture’. Kim Taehyung (director-general, Urban Space Improvement of SMG) added that ‘as a trial project for the establishment of vertical gardens pursued by SMG, it is hoped that the project will provide a platform to extend a sense of community between citizens, as well as complementary technology and systems, which will drive initiatives to extend the vertical garden to privately owned buildings in the mid-long term’.
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