What makes: Seoul?
Our round-up of Seoul’s core ‘sense of place’ ingredients
The city of Seoul hosts endless pockets of culture, future, architecture, history, nature, and commerce. Almost at every turn, there is a sheer drop and a panorama that shows you all at once. Then, on the ground, one can get lost among the boutique coffee shops, traditional markets, and winding residential streets.
It is a city that sprawls for 605km2 without breaking character once.
But what defines Seoul and its intoxicating sense of place? There is heady feeling in this city that it is in the midst of great change. With a strong cultural confidence, a dynamic vision of the future, and an audacious renewal of public spaces – it is clear that Seoul is traversing a path of transition. We define its direction into three core themes:
Beauty
Seoul is a city with an eye for aesthetics. Of course, like all cities, South Korea’s capital has both beautiful and not-so-beautiful parts to it, yet the difference here is the appreciation for the visual.
In part, this stems from an Instagram culture run rampant. Shops, cafés, galleries and tourist stops are all designed with the 1:1 photographic window in mind. Elaborate flower displays set the backdrop for coffee; towers of delicately placed pastries dominate the table for lunch. Even cosmetic surgery is considered a rite of passage here – appearance is held in the highest regard.
But this importance transcends the artificial. Blessed with mountainous terrain and dense thickets of national park, in Seoul, there is a sweeping panorama at every turn. With effortless vistas that show the city’s seamless transition of urban into nature, it is no wonder that beauty is in the eye of Seoul.
Fusion
Combining its fast commercial development with careful cultural preservation, Seoul is a city of balance.
Attaining this cultivated state of homeostasis hasn’t been easy. Having developed rapidly since the 1950s, the residents and government of Seoul have worked hard to ‘put culture back’ into the city’s public spaces. From conservation schemes to public art campaigns; from landmark design galleries to central linear parks – the old has been grafted back into the new.
Today, Seoul is a city that is blending traditional architecture with modern tastes, combining historical references with innovative technology, and introducing tentative greenery into brutalist urban landscapes. Here, the contrasts aren’t kept apart; they are fused together to create a balance unique to Seoul.
Enrichment
In the past five years, the Republic of Korea has ensnared the world’s imagination, as K-Pop and Korean television have catapulted the country into the global consciousness. Of course, this has cultural consequences, and today Seoul can be found with a confident, self-assured population – resolved on personal and national progress.
Through its city improvement projects, meticulously appointed public amenities, and innovative new public programmes, it is clear that Seoul is continuing on this path of enrichment. Most striking of all is its commitment to joining the metaverse; a bold ambition that sets the city at the forefront of global digital placemaking.
For Seoul, the path ahead is one of progress, attainment, and enrichment.
