- Overview
-
The author visits nine small local cities, which are full of unique Korean culture and experiences, and pilgrimizes alleyway after alleyway. The author diagnoses the past and present, and the urban problems of historic cities and designs a future city.
- Book Intro
-
Professor Han Pilwon, an architectural humanities scholar, unveiled a field-based theory of cities by visiting nine old local cities of Korea and pilgrimizing alleyway after alleyway. This book includes the stories of nine cities that captivated the author's eyes, namely, Milyang where the river of curved line and the central road of straight line intersect, Tongyeong which was created by the sea and artists, Andong which is the city of noblemen and preserves the dead end of an alleyway, Chuncheon which preserves spring as the city of water, Anseong which is a commercial city with humanism, Ganggyeong which preserves a foreign landscape as an old port city, Chungju which is a city running on the two wheels of courtesy (藝, Ye) and martial arts (武, Mu), Jeonju which preserves the tradition of the Korean-style houses, and Naju which is an ancient capital city with a thousand-year history. These cities meet the three criteria; a city with a long history; a city with a small downtown that you can walk around; and a city with charm and potential as a modern city. You can meet humane and beautiful spaces and places that are hard to find in a modern metropolis where community life has disappeared and people are preoccupied with their own individual interests.
It is very difficult to read the process of change in time and space accumulated layer upon layer in an old city. It is not easy to discover the uniqueness and individuality of each city intertwined with the pre-modern period, the modern period, and the contemporary development process of the present day. The author satisfies the curiosity layer after layer by going around alleyway after alleyway through several successive exploration trips to these cities. The author reads the cities by setting out to look for old forgotten artifacts or village legends, or by following the trace and epic of the Korean-style houses and modern architecture accidently found in a dead end alley, and the people living therein. You can meet the different aspects of Korea through the local Korean cities such as stories about the buildings located in the horizontal axis being the center of the city and the people living there, the ancient and current maps, and the sketches of city landscape drawn by the author.
- About the Author
-
Han Pilwon
Han Pilwon is an architecture professor at Hannam University. He has been conducting research on traditional houses and villages, and historic cities since he was in graduate school in the mid-1980s. In 1985, he began studying traditional Korean villages and has expanded his research to traditional villages and historic cities of East Asian countries since 1995. Han also has been conducting a field study of historic Korean cities since 2006. He pays attention to discovering regional cultural assets and interpreting them from a modern perspective. He carries out practical works to plan and design a new space suitable for local cultures and environments together with ATA, a research community, based on the empirical study of traditional space.
- Award
-
- Recommendation
-
- Selection
-
- Bestseller Rank
-