emergent cities: LONDON: The Contract

A special week: we were joined in Seoul by Robert and Catrina for the sharing and signing of contracts. This marks a pivotal moment in the Free Unit, one that ends the initial period of investigation and defines the ambition of the project in order to move into more focused territory.

My contract takes the form of a visual document. It is a discussion about voids in the city as a means of examining a specific traumatic event. The images and text form a map of an investigation that acknowledges scale, the process of discovery and site.

THE CONTRACT

The contract format implied deliberation on material presence:
how should it be viewed? And where?

An aimless stroll along the city’s main boulevard Jongno-ro proved surprisingly rewarding. Cutting a swathe from east to west it is one of the oldest processional streets in Seoul.

JONGNO-RO an ancient processional thoroughfare

It is also one of the busiest, and so, abandoning the crowd I slipped into a parallel side-street along its northern flank; a ragged alley that hums with industriousness, and through the rear doors, affords glimpses back to the main street it sustains:

The main street; the side street...

...and glimpses between...

...a gap that bridges a gap

In this place it is the space between objects; the incisions in the urban fabric – one broad and one narrow - that create a narrative about the city. As a processional route, Jongno-ro was strictly speaking private space, the domain of royalty and dignitaries. Pre-colonial maps show narrow lines bordering the length of the main street on either side. These slender counterparts enabled uninhibited circulation for everyone else.
In their present incarnation, the side-streets terminate in fits and starts along the northern boundary, and have been largely erased from the southern one. The major thoroughfare was the first to be enlarged by the occupying Japanese as part of the ‘ordering of streets’.

TWO INCISIONS; the private wide street, the narrow public street (1927, 2010)

The view between the streets creates a space that connects two separate conditions; it is a gap that bridges a gap. The alley is the intermediary scale between those depicted in my contract; it is my gallery.