SPACE September 2025 (No. 694)
I spent my childhood in Seoul, much of which took place right after the Seoul 1988 Olympics. Seoul at the time was undergoing rapid changes in its shift towards a more consumerist culture, one especially centred around the younger generation—this was the era in which the very first convenience stores appeared. However, these changes didn’t seem to reach Chungjeong-ro, the neighbourhood in which I lived. The heart of our neighbourhood was still the small street supermarket, where fruit, vegetables, and soft drinks were displayed. As I had no friends in my age group, I often went to that store with my grandmother. As in many neighbourhoods back then, there was a small wooden platform in front of the shop, where I would sit and wait while she was grocery shopping. Listening to the familiar conversations of adults that I knew, in this familiar place, gave me a certain sense of peace and comfort as a child. Looking back, those everyday scenes of economic activity between adults were part of a community landscape that, although blurred across the decades, I can still recall. Afterwards, urbanisation transformed our daily lives at an overwhelming pace. The entire process – from production to consumption – became ever more deeply subsumed under the logic of the ‘economy of scale’, and today economic activities take place within a complex distribution structure dominated by corporations and capital. This shift in the large cities spread across the entire country. As a result, most consumption now occurs through standardised distribution channels such as large supermarkets, convenience stores, and online platforms, regardless of local context. This change carries significant social implications—not only in the homogenising effect of product offerings but also in the loss of local distinctiveness, and more fundamentally, in the ‘standardisation of lifestyles’.
©Of Architecture
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Of Architecture Limited (Na Jongwon, James Mak) +
Kim Minji (Of Architecture), Lee Haksung (Save Arc
2420 Dongbu-daero (482-8, 483-1 Dongdae-ri), Chang
neighbourhood living facility (restaurant, market)
2,906㎡
734.3㎡
482-8 - 578.9㎡/ 483-1 - 155.4㎡
1F
10
5.2m
482-8 – 29.18% / 483-1 – 16.3%
482-8 – 29.18% / 483-1 – 16.3%
steel frame, RC
stucco, mosaic tiles, deck plate, exposed concrete
exposed concrete, painted plasterboard, painted CR
MOA Eng.
Sungji E&C
Kukdong Global Inc.
Apr. – Nov. 2023
May 2024 – Apr. 2025
2 billion KRW
Namhae Agricultural Technology Center
