SUBSTRATES + STITCHES - Seoul International Garden Show 2020

The shape and scope of our installation is simple and practical. We couple common landscape materials with traditional techniques like Pojagi and sail-making to create six unique geotextile vessels. The top of each vessel is a square the size of the average urban tree-planting pit. But below this rim, the vessels swell with a soil mix harvested from local urban excavations and municipal bio-waste streams. The vessels are self-stabilizing once filled, and the bulging, colorfully wrapped soil sculptures form an arrangement of spaces, seating, and play surfaces as arranged on the site.

Son Gi Jeong Park sits on moderately deep coarse-loam and sandy loam soils above a small decomposing granitic outcrop. The park is adjacent to deeper and more saturated alluvial silt-loams in the shallow valley running below the Seoullo 7017 crossing. We propose to intercept waste soils as they are excavated from nearby construction and redevelopment projects as the bulk soil fill for each geotextile vessel. These captured soils will be tested for any contaminants, and then mixed with municipal organic waste and nitrogen compost to specified portions.

The vessels are made of two types of rib and stitch reinforced geotextile fabric: the top layer for porosity and workability, and the bottom layer for strength, puncture resistance, and drainage. Our cost estimate for these items is based on quotations from specialty canvas furniture fabricators and sail-makers. Though we hope to make the contact of a local large-scale textile fabricator, we are also capable of fabricating the vessels in Hong Kong/China under our close supervision and shipping the finished product to South Korea for installation only.

The design team has extensive experience in building landscapes and specialty fabrication. Our design involves very simple on-site works—mulching, filling bags with amended soil, and a small area of mixed planting. If selected, we would eagerly accept the input of a local contractor, especially with respect to plant availability and our proposed soil procurement schedule that involves only recycled—not purchased—soil. The complex, and most costly, component of the design will be made entirely off-site.

At the root of our settlements, at the foundation of our cities, at the core of our gardens is soil. Seoul is built into the landscapes that were shaped and cultivated before it. But the earthen substrates of our cities have been diminished, degraded and fragmented. We talk about greening the city, but we should really be talking about revealing and enriching its soil first. Soil determines ecosystem health and is the basis for the ecological and social benefits of urban nature. Soil links to our traditions, to patterns of life and livelihood, our diverse but shared cultural identities.

Enough with showy leaves and excessively cultivated flowers—let’s make a garden out of dirt! Our proposal brings soil to the surface, revealing its mass and weight, its smell, its warmth. It celebrates the processes of soil formation and educates visitors about the continuous exchanges between air, water, roots, microbes and humans in the soil cycle. Our garden matures as the soil is interpenetrated by roots, soil-invertebrates, and fungal hyphae, and while the geotextile wrappings are colonized by wild-dispersed seeds. When the exhibition is retired, the remediated soil is harvested for use in new planting works beyond the park.

TYPE

Garden - Public Park

Size

150㎡

LOCATION

Seoul, Korea

YEAR

2020

Client

Seoul International Garden Show 2020

Status

Competition Finalist; To be Constructed