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| Architectural rendering of sustainable floating city / Courtesy of Oceanix Busan |
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On April 26, 2022, the following announcement was made: "U.N.-Habitat, the Busan Metropolitan City of the Republic of Korea, and Oceanix today unveiled at U.N. Headquarters the design of the world's first prototype sustainable floating city. Oceanix Busan aims to provide breakthrough technology for coastal cities facing severe land shortages that are compounded by climatic threats." Busan has also announced its bid to host the 2030 World Expo, proposing a solution to the global climate crisis through the power of technology, culture and art.
From over a meter of snowfall at Mount Halla to the warming of the Arctic to the unprecedented flooding of Gangnam Station in the middle of Seoul, climate phenomena threaten our survival. In director Bong Joon-ho's film, "Parasite," this scene unfolds vividly. Due to torrential rain, the Kitaek family's "banjiha" (semi-basement) apartment unit is submerged, and they barely make it out of their flooded neighborhood.
Sea levels are rising at a rapid rate due to global warming. Coastal cities around the world are sinking. Touchstones of the environmental crisis include melting glaciers, torrential rains, coastal erosion, forest fires, groundwater depletion, new viruses, compromised drinking water, and a number of other concerns. Such occurrences cannot simply be treated as separate phenomena: these individual disasters are interconnected and disrupt the entire ecosystem and affect us all.
"Our urgent task is to restore refugia," the noted eco-feminist philosopher Donna Haraway said. Many scholars talk about the current ecological crisis as the collapse of the refugia. The earth, born 4.6 billion years ago, has gone through several ice ages. During this period, extreme environmental changes, including climate change, occurred, but there were areas and refuges (refugia) that avoided them. Now, human-precipitated climate change is threatening these refugia.
Eastern thought is fundamentally based on the organic thinking of nature as "it is by itself." Taoism, which regards unity with nature as the highest good, and Korean traditional architecture with roots in Taoism place importance on the recognition that nature and human beings are organically intertwined. With a philosophy of adapting to nature as an alternative to responding to natural disasters, it does not separate itself from the object and does not impose artificial order on nature. Traditionally, this is the beauty that has been valued in Korean architecture, art and aesthetics.
Based on the nature-friendly philosophy of Korean traditional architecture, the concept of refugia can be applied to the floating city, thereby providing hope to humanity. Korea, a small country in East Asia, has historically been resistant to crises, embracing the colloquialism that "small peppers are spicy."
Korea overcame the challenges of Japanese colonial rule and dislocation during the Korean War to rebuild successfully. Busan, the second largest city in Korea, served as a refuge during the Korean War, and, as a seaport city historically, rich in foreign culture, has since flourished as a place where an open and hybrid culture has developed. It is a place with geopolitical characteristics that harmonize well with the international community, and now, significantly, can offer a source of hope.
Unfortunately, Busan is not exempt from environmental concerns, such as rising sea levels. Countless coastal cities around the world are threatened by rising water. This climate and ecological crisis is not a problem that can be solved by individual efforts alone. Neither should we depend on the invisible "market" for solutions.
We need to transform our politics, economy and lifestyles at every level, including the government, community and the individual. A shift in our consciousness must take place at a scale and speed unprecedented in history. The construction of a floating city represents this effort. Korea has demonstrated, time and again, its status as a leader in science and technology, as well as its ability to envision sustainable, dream-like architectural projects and state-of-the-art technology. Korea boasts one of the largest shipbuilding industries in the world as well as a top construction industry that has built major infrastructure projects worldwide, especially in the Middle East.
As part of its 2030 World Expo bid, Busan proposes a blueprint for humankind to co-exist sustainably with the sea. The world's first pilot model of a sustainable floating community, with a total area of 6.3 hectares of interconnected platforms, is initially envisaged to accommodate a population of 12,000 people (and eventually more than 100,000).
Each platform is connected to the mainland by a bridge and forms a structure for housing, research, lodging, water recreation, cultural art and performance. It also produces energy and crops with greenhouses, zero-waste circulation systems, self-treated closed water systems, food, (net-zero) carbon-neutral energy and innovative mobility. The program includes coastal habitat regeneration, and solar energy production systems, with interconnected systems to save and recycle resources.
I propose to take this one step further and create three floating cities, one along each major coast of Korea that incorporates Korean aesthetics and philosophy. Drawing from the vision of U.N.-Habitat, an international organization that aims to innovate change through knowledge, policy recommendations, technical assistance and pilot projects in more than 90 countries. Each city will be sustainably governed consistently by international environmental policy.
Korea has now become a leader on the world stage. Its architecture, culture, art and urban policy are well-positioned to diplomatically address global crises in concert with the U.N. Combining the role of the U.N. with Busan's role as a hub for Asia, we are well positioned to design an alternative to current urban planning that is ethical, practical and forward-looking.
If we keep in mind the unimaginable complexity and unpredictability of our global ecosystem, we must accept that our power is only one factor in the earth's destiny. No one, and nothing, in this world survives alone. We must practice "living together" by sharing, communicating and interacting with other beings. Korean culture (K-Architecture, K-culture) and innovation ― exemplified by the floating city project ― offers up a solution to achieve this vision.
Lee Kyung-hwa (khl@namjunepaikcfoundation.org), a graduate of Harvard University Graduate School of Design, is the international director of the Nam June Paik Cultural Foundation.
