ARC3015YF
Fall 2024 Option Studio
Instructor: Nahyun Hwang
Meeting Section: L0105
Tuesdays, 9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., 2:00-6:00 p.m.

The traveling research studio investigates possible futures for the sites (formerly) militarized by colonial and foreign powers in the Korean peninsula, exploring their often hidden intersections with environment and ecology, and the unique social, developmental, and architectural patterns and typologies around and within the extra-territories.

Introduction
In 2022, Yongsan Budae (or Dragon Mountain Army Base), an approximately 630-acre land near the Han River in the heart of the South Korean capital city of Seoul, was finally, or at least partially if symbolically, returned to Korea after more than 120 years under foreign possession. The area formerly known as “Dun-Ji-San,” or a village on the low hill, was first violently occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1905 as an administrative headquarters and a strategic base for the Japanese Empire's colonial expansion, followed by the U.S. military in 1945 with the end of World War II when Korea was being divided into two occupation zones—the south governed by the U.S. and the north by the Soviet Union. For 79 years since then, and through the Korean War and the Cold War era, the site has been separated from the rest of the city by the 8-kilometer-long wall and 21 accompanying gates, functioning as the central operational and residential hub of the U.S. military and United Nations Command for the Asia-Pacific region.

While most well-known due to its scale and location, Yongsan is only a fraction of (formerly) militarized foreign land in South Korea scattered across 96,000 acres, occupying some of the most historically and ecologically charged locations in the southern half of the Korean peninsula. Often symbols of the alliance for the security of the "free world” on a global scale, the terrains forbidden to Korean nationals constitute obscured voids in the nation's literal and psychological cartography. The unknowable lands, often camouflaged with meticulously imagined digital wilderness on many maps, spatialize not only the formidable power dynamics in global geopolitics but also the quiet violence that denies the physical and epistemological sovereignty of one's own territory, maintaining the geography of spectral terrains where the colonial legacy and its extractive relationship to land may linger.

Engaging interim states that many of the sites are in due to the convergence of scheduled returns, environmental issues, developmental pressures, and fluxes of national and international politics, the studio explores the social, architectural, and ecological complexities and potentials in and around the base sites including Yongsan, through research and design projections in varying scales and media. As the constructed towns of far-flung nations thrive in the base's interior, the periphery builds the official and illicit spaces of the "Base Economy," and spontaneous, if commodified, zones of multi-cultural exchange emerge. While the unknowable quantity of contaminants quietly (de)materializes into the soils and waters of the surrounding land, the landscapes un-trespassed by “civilians” for decades and saved from the forces of development entangle with unexpected new ecologies.

Course Structure
The studio is structured as a series of interconnected research, analysis, and design propositions.

1. Collective Overview and Preliminary Research
Establishing the common ground, the studio surveys the relevant discourses and contexts through readings, guest lectures, and collective research, aiming to bring forward critical observations pertinent to the studio topic. The research culminates into a “(Ex) Base Scape Catalog.”

2. Topical Investigation / Positioning
The studio members conduct in-depth investigations on the selected topics and locations and produce highly specific analytic and exploratory documents, “Atlas of (Ex) Extra-Territories.” The work instigates and parallels the individuated agendas and trajectories of "Propositions" and helps shape the design framework and potential strategies.

3. Propositions
The studio explores the architectures of (ex) base territories through Design Projects diverse in program, location, scale, mediatic and (trans) disciplinary frameworks.

Studio Trip
The studio will travel to Seoul during the week of October 28 to visit parts of Yongsan Garrison and other selected sites and to exchange with local communities, scholars, activists, artists, architects and others. The itinerary will also include an excursion to part of the DMZ (the Demilitarized Zone) and other relevant locations. The trip is optional.

Schedule
The studio will meet in person and online.

Instructor Contact
Nahyun Hwang (n@nhdm.org)
www.nhdm.net / @nhdm_arch