As the capital and representative city of South Korea, Seoul handles a significant population and traffic volume. While the city's landscape is constantly evolving and developing, it also presents various social and environmental challenges. In partic...
As the capital and representative city of South Korea, Seoul handles a significant population and traffic volume. While the city's landscape is constantly evolving and developing, it also presents various social and environmental challenges. In particular, urban overcrowding leads to economic losses and air pollution due to increased traffic, and the sheer number of people suffocates ground-level spaces and green spaces. To address these issues, a new mode of transportation, Urban Air Mobility (UAM), has emerged. To address this phenomenon and its challenges, developing countries are actively planning and developing vertiports. This study aims to predict the future of Seoul and plan appropriate vertiports to accelerate the commercialization of UAM.
Accordingly, this study aims to classify the spatial composition and types of vertiports, derive the characteristics and elements of vertiport space, and analyze planning cases from major developing countries and companies. Vertiports can be broadly categorized into two types: Greenfield and Retrofit. Greenfield types can be planned in major urban hubs where securing vertiport space is feasible, while retrofit types can be planned where securing space is difficult or through integration with existing facilities. The three spatial characteristics derived from vertiport types are accessibility to transportation, functional expandability, and spatial eco-friendliness. Based on these characteristics and detailed spatial elements, planning cases from major overseas development companies were analyzed. The results of the analysis were applied to a future urban vertiport space design project that emphasizes the two characteristics of functional expandability and spatial eco-friendliness.
The project background of this study was based on the concept of design fiction, and the appearance of the future city and social phenomena were set as hypotheses and written in the form of a scenario. Design fiction consists of two elements: What if and Diegetic Prototype. What if is the stage of setting up a hypothesis based on the science, technology, and social phenomena related to the project to be designed, and Diegetic Prototype is the result of various forms and types created through the hypothesis. Based on the What if through setting up a hypothesis, the results called scenario and vertiport space plan were produced. The space plan of the project was proposed as a design in the form of an expansion and renovation of the Hyundai Motor Company GBC building scheduled for completion in Samseong-dong.
The spatial plan of this study, which was applied to the greening of the ground due to air pollution and the high-rise city due to urban overcrowding, set structural expansion in terms of functional expandability and circular system of space in terms of space eco-friendliness as the main elements, and developed it into a vertiport space design suitable for the future city center.
The structural expansion is the most crucial element that explains the design concept of nest, a vertiport spatial element that can adapt to a variety of buildings and structures. Utilizing lightweight, transportable space finishing materials and building materials, the space is designed to be modular design, disassembled, and assembled.
The cyclical system of the space is an element that demonstrates that the space efficiently uses its own energy production and utilization to operate electric vertical take-off and landing machines and vertiport spaces.
This study proposes a spatial form and program suitable for the urban environment of Seoul, South Korea, in the future, and presents the possibility and vision of a prototype that can be applied and expanded not only to the designated target site but also to other target sites or environments.