A CONTEMPORARY ASIAN PRACTICE

In 2017 an almost kilometre-long park constructed on a stretch of redundant highway was opened in the centre of Seoul. Design blogs and media across the world disseminated the Dutch design practice MVRDV’s inspiration for the scheme. Claiming the park as “South Korea’s answer to New York’s High Line,” the design website Dezeen outlined Seoullo 7017’s major design features, including an urban arboretum with plants organized according to the Korean alphabet and set in a vast array of circles, combined with the requisite urban programs. MVRDV’s co-founding director Winy Maas describes the garden as “human and friendly and green,” offering approaches typical of European city planning. However, he claims a “science fiction element” as an Asian reference, stating that “in Asia they want to dip their cities in this super-green feeling that comes from science fiction, from movies like Avatar.”

From Peter Walker to Winy Maas to Rem Koolhaas, we have become accustomed to European and North American designers defining the potentials of our new world cities. As an Australian academic I followed with disbelief the design for Barangaroo Reserve, which uncritically proposed the reconstruction