Day 4

Our fourth day was mainly comprised of touring city hall, both the original and current. The original hall was constructed in 1926 and was made with reinforced concrete walls with brick curtain walls between and a copper plated roof. The entrance was given granite flooring whilst the staircases were made with marble. They floored special rooms with carpet and the offices were given lithium. The differing flooring gives each room a distinct feel and purpose ranging from business to discussion to conversation. The same is true for the walls as the entrance has stone walls to match the floor and carpeted rooms have relaxing wall paper covering them.

This all is very contrasted by the more recent city hall. The new hall is a massive glass complex which dwarfs the old one. It is covered ceiling to floor with plants to help with cooling the building as well as have certain types of fruit trees. In keeping with the theme of community and giving back to the people 3 floors of the building are social or public spaces that anyone can use. I’m the basement a large control room is housed. This room is Seouls Tranfic Operation and Information Service. Here they control all off the traffic in Seoul as well as monitor for potential traffic congestion.

To finish off the day we headed too Seoullo7017 which is a sky garden built on a old overpass highway. It features 24,000 plants which are all native species and stretches for about a kilometer. This was just another example of using old infrastructure and turning it into something new and giving to the public.

I give Seouls original city hall a 6/10, it’s new city hall a 10/10, and Seoullo7017s effort to transforming the old into something for nature a 9/10.