Day 4

Today I want to talk about some more specific projects. We visited a landscape architecture company in Seoul that played a major part in the restoration of the Cheonggyecheon stream. (pictured) This is actually a subject I did a little bit of research on before coming here, so it was incredible to meet the makers behind it. They restored this river basically back into a river. It was covered by roads prior to the reconstruction. To me some of the incredible things about it are the massive size of this project, how short it took to build (two years), and I am amazed by the amount of thought that the designers and other creators put into the project. Every small detail and shape has meaning. The area is an incredibly lush mini ecosystem in the middle of the huge metropolitan area. When we walked out of it I remember someone making a comment about how it didn’t even feel like we were in a city during the three hours we spent walking the river. It is an incredible feat of design and engineering toward a more sustainable future.

Cheonggyecheon Stream