Reflecting Nature Through Design

Reflecting Nature Through Design (after design has destroyed nature)

BY: DANIELLE DEL SOL | OCTOBER - 12 - 2010

In his project “Collage Scape,” Kang Woo-Young, an associate professor at the Kaywon School of Art and Design in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea imagines a future where nature has been eradicated from the modern urban landscape, and must be replaced with a man-made landscape. To combat a sea of typical skyscrapers, Woo-Young has designed a building that stacks “memories of nature,” and mimics the natural world’s patterns by blending mathematical precision with art and technology. Using the layering and fluctuating forms of energy fields, lava flows and sediment accumulation as inspirations, the building builds layers of curving shapes into a 600 meter-tall skyscraper, a utopian oasis in the newly developed modern metropolis of Songdo in Incheon, South Korea.

Encompassed in a skyscaper is a highly abstract yet earthy ethos: Woo-Young cites Pangea, the earth’s initial landmass, as the origin of all design, and seeks to harness that collective memory of energy and creation to define the essence of his building.

The main feature of Woo-Young’s building - which is actually several in one, imagined as many small buildings melded into one large skyscraper - is a vertical park that features climbing walls, paths for jogging and biking and picnic areas. By honoring nature in form and providing greenery for the recreation of those working inside, Woo-Young’s building restores a semblance of humans’ connection to the earth in an ultra-modern, concrete urban future.