CROSSROADS BUILDING THE RESILIENT CITY, SEOUL BIENNALE OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (SBAU 2021)

CROSSROADS
BUILDING THE RESILIENT CITY

SEOUL BIENNALE OF ARCHITECTURE
AND URBANISM (SBAU 2021)

RESEARCH

RE–007

In urban areas, which are currently facing unprecedented challenges, the new generation of designers is challenged to find innovative and fair solutions to increasingly complex problems related to access to resources, health and safety needs, improving the quality of and access to housing, services, and infrastructure, even as environmental demands increase and digitalization processes introduce profound changes in our relationships with space, time, and modes of production.

Resilience, derived from the concept of ecological resilience defined by Canadian ecologist C.S. Holling, literally refers to the ability of an environment or an individual to regain its balance after a disturbance, by adapting to the unexpected in order to limit its impact. Applied to cities, the goal of resilience, abandoning the illusion of zero risk, focuses on reducing vulnerability in order to make cities more robust in the face of shocks, whatever they may be. Unlike the planner’s optimal and functional city, designed in terms of efficiency and rationalization of resources and functions, the resilient city invites people to reconnect with their environment in a new urban ideal, conceived as a system that is complex, flexible, and agile. What knowledge, means, and tools do we have at our disposal to think about resilience through architecture? What are the possible responses implemented by architects, urban planners, landscape architects, and all those designing the city of tomorrow?

Produced in the context of a pandemic that challenges the functioning of our modern, technological civilization, this international Biennale aims to showcase a rich and inspiring array of ideas focused on creating a new urbanity, one based on sharing and mutualization, capable of restoring citizens’ confidence in their living spaces. In a nutshell, and echoing the theme of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale entitled “How will we live together?”, it questions the processes of designing the city and its places, its functioning, and its identities, by putting people back at the center of the issues: “Where do we want to live?”

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PROGRAM

Organization of the 3rd Seoul Biennale, entitled “Crossroads, Building the Resilient City,” featuring a series of exhibitions and events structured around five thematic entry points: “Above/Below” (on urban planning), “Heritage/Modern” (on architecture), “Craft/Digital” (on design), “Natural/Artificial” (on landscape), and “Safe/Risk” (on the city). These themes aim to explore cities and metropolises around the world and, following a call for ideas, present 160 international installations and projects from five continents. Dominique Perrault, Executive Director of the Biennale, is also curator of the Biennale’s main exhibitions, “Cities” and “Thematic.”

DETAIL

Situation

Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), Seoul, South Korea

Year

2021

Statut

International exhibition, general curator and scenography

Sponsor

Seoul Metropolitan Government, Seoul

Executive Director, Curator, and Scenographer

Dominique Perrault, architect, urbanist

DESCRIPTION

The Seoul Biennale is a laboratory for experimentation where architecture confronts the complexity of the world, a laboratory under tension where architecture, urban planning, science, art, engineering, and philosophy intersect and collide. Its manifesto, “CrossRoads, Building the Resilient City,” outlines five lines of tension that directly address the contradictions shaping our era: above and below, heritage and modernity, natural and artificial, security and risk, artisanal and digital. These five fault lines refuse compromise in order to generate hybrid, radical projects capable of opening new paths toward a sustainable and resilient planet. The scenography itself becomes a field of friction: a huge grid, like a chessboard, hosts a position statement in each of its squares, where the diversity of forms, materials, narratives, and experiences composes a cartography of futures to be invented, an invitation to make architecture a political art once again.

This third edition of the Seoul Architecture and Urbanism Biennale invites us to move beyond a standardized vision of the city and highlights the virtues of dialogue and the exchange of knowledge as fertile ground for the process of urban development and architectural creation. Six thematic figures, called “Crossroads,” offer guidance on approaches to defining the contours of tomorrow’s city:

– ABOVE X BELOW delves into the stratifications of the city, questioning its space and its limits;

– HERITAGE X MODERN questions the architecture of the city and its ability to reinvent itself over time;

– CRAFT X DIGITAL questions the evolution of its functioning and design through the prism of transformations linked to new technologies;

– NATURAL X ARTIFICIAL explores its relationship with living things, geography, and landscape;

– SAFE X RISK examines the consideration and impacts of risk management in the composition of architectural and urban space;

– Finally, ARCHITECTURE X INFRASTRUCTURE addresses all the issues at the heart of the previous “Crossroads” and observes the possible hybridizations between two seemingly distant disciplinary fields as a means of enriching and decompartmentalizing urban life.

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Contact

Dominique Perrault Architecture
6 Rue Bouvier, 75011 Paris, France

CROSSROADS BUILDING THE RESILIENT CITY, SEOUL BIENNALE OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (SBAU 2021)