Bangs, where South Korean contemporary urban identity begins

Professor Jungin Kim and 13 students from Soongsil University are visiting the Academy in connection with an exchange between the South Korean university and Groningen’s Academy of Architecture. This exchange is a follow-up to the visit that Academy students paid to South Korea last May.

Jungin Kim’s lecture will centre on the typically South Korean phenomenon of Bangs.

In Seoul, amid the incredible speed and vast scale of urbanisation, various multifunctional spaces have been developed. The Koreans call these generic spaces, which serve multiple purposes, ‘Bangs’. Bangs offer a kind of flexible backdrop to life in the city and contribute to the unique urban identity of Seoul, a built environment comprising an unbelievably complex network of Bangs.

Taking the Bangs as his starting point, Professor Jungin Kim challenges our customary way of thinking about space.

Go here to read the full text on the lecture given by Professor Jungin Kim.

Jungin Kim is an architect and scientist. In addition, he is currently the ‘Public Architect’ for Seoul, having been appointed by the city’s metropolitan council. Kim earned his Master of Architecture and his PhD at UC Berkeley (California, USA), where he also taught in the past. He currently holds a position as Professor at Soongsil University in Seoul, South Korea.

As an academic, he focuses on the interaction between the built environment and the changing structures of urban consciousness in East Asia. His work devotes particular attention to a number of major urban projects in China, Japan and Korea. Within that context, he studies the social and political consequences of these projects through detailed analyses of civil protests as well as the way that they contribute to the debate on urban rights and new forms of citizenship.

Language of the lecture: English
Admission is free, all interested parties are welcome to attend; however, we do ask that you register in advance via: avbg@org.hanze.nl