Call It "Green Freud City", South Korea

There is something suggestive, almost Freudian, about the shape of South Korea's new green city, designed by MVRDV, to be erected just south of Seoul. There is a subtle sense of fecundity and nurturing about the design which is difficult to pin down. It is planned as a "self-sustaining city of the future," and could be considered as almost an arcology.

MVRDV’s masterplan provides space for housing, offices, shops, and educational facilities. Designed as a cluster of structures rising up in concentric rings, each floor in the city is lined with lush box hedges that improve ventilation while reducing energy and water usage. An internal irrigation system stores extra water from the buildings and uses it to sustain these green facades. MVRDV states: “This diverse program has different needs for phasing, positioning and size. To facilitate this all elements are designed as rings. By pushing these rings outwards, every part of the program receives a terrace for outdoor life.”

The concept is currently being reviewed for development and feasibility at Gyeonggi provincial authority’s Urban Innovation Corporation. Development is to be completed in 2011 and construction will start shortly after. _Inhabitat

Or perhaps I am the only one who sees green terraced breasts and phalli where one might normally expect to see only rice fields. No matter. The Dutch designers and South Korean builders are to be commended for their willingness to push the concept of designed communities closer to the scale of arcology.

There is an obvious absence of industry in Green Freud, SK, but then green design is not always practical or realistic. When thinking of arcology as prototype for lunar colonies, orbital cities, undersea habitats or polar settlements, one imagines a greater degree of self-sufficiency than perhaps most green ideologues are capable of imagining, much less the green functionaries and bureaucrats who will be leading the "great march downward" of the US' new Dear Leader.