OBSERVATION, DOCUMENTATION, AND IMAGINED SITUATIONS OF LIFE: The Yeouido Sibum Apartments as an Uncommon South Korean Modern Architectural Precedent

초록

South Korean modern architectural precedents from the post-war period have not been properly discussed by academics and practitioners and risk disappearing as they approach their life expectancy. This chapter focuses on the architecture of the Yeouido Sibum Apartments, one of the (un)common South Korean high-rise urban housing complexes built in the early 1970s. By closely looking at residents’ lives in the apartment complex over the last 50 years as well as the additions to the original building structure, the chapter describes the sustainable architectural qualities of the Yeouido Sibum Apartments, which are unique to the first ideal urban housing project of the era. Artists from different creative fields were invited to participate in an exhibition project titled “Visualizing the Invisible,” documenting the Apartments. Each artist produced linguistic and visual narratives of the buildings. In this process, place-bound stories going beyond the physical and spatial qualities emerged, revealing traces of the residents’ past lives, and demonstrating future participatory values for wider audiences. © 2026 selection and editorial matter, Federica Goffi, Isabel Potworowski and Kristin Washco; individual chapters, the contributors.