An Integrated Platform
A Proposal for an Integrated Urban Platform Connecting Seoul Gang Byun Metro-Station to East Seoul Express-Bus Terminal
The Gang-Byeon Station, This thesis attempts to connect the metro station to the Bus terminal to reconstruct the relationship of socio-cultural realm between the Han-River and area of the city, and eventually to have the station and the terminal integrated with surrounding context in multilayered relationship to be act as a contextural urban platform.
When planning the transportation infrastructure considering only the route that reaches the shortest time, it is advantageous to approach the distant area, but in the physical and visual approach, it leads to the disconnection between the adjacent areas or to the poor environment.
Having an inseparable relation with urban structure by ways of speed, movement, and linkage, subway stations in the contemporary city is regarded to be a contextual building that associate with surrounding context through multiple layers according to use and purpose; Nevertheless, it is not exaggeration to say that subway stations, so far, have been indiscreetly constructed only in concern with distance, traveling time, and local traffic. Such sporadic urban expansions intervened in already disconnected urban space by indiscreet urban development, to result in irrational and unreasonable exploitation. Programmed as a transit station for the East-Seoul expressway bus terminal, for instance, the Kangbyeon station is, unworthy of its poetic aura inherent in the name‘Gang_Byeon’that means riverside, merely an elevated railway built in the middle of the traffic road. It is, moreover, not only an inconvenience in connections and access between the subway station and the terminal, but also a confusedness in the transfer function itself that has made the station disconnected with the surrounding community. The study attempts to criticize the subway stations uniformly built anywhere in the city with no relationship with the surrounding context, to confirm the fact that a subway station, as a public space, requires not only a traffic function, but also a sense of place to be shared, and to verify that a station, as a complementary device responding to psycho-cultural aspects of the city, should establish a platform that helps communicate with the surroundings. The study aims at, therefore, providing people with one-stop service by connecting the station platform with the bus terminal, introducing the riverfront atmosphere to the city, and proposing, as infra-scape, an integrated city platform that links waterfront space with the city physically as well as psychologically.
