University Campus in the city, especially in Seoul, maintains ambivalent tendency in its situation and the relationship with the surrounding context. The university campuses in Seoul are usually fenced up to distinguish themselves from the outside whi...
University Campus in the city, especially in Seoul, maintains ambivalent tendency in its situation and the relationship with the surrounding context. The university campuses in Seoul are usually fenced up to distinguish themselves from the outside while at the same time, they are defined as public realm of which huge void resides in the urban space.
As the function and programs of today's university has become complex enough for the area of the campus to be far extended, it also becomes useless to have a clear distinction of the private and the public between the urban structure and the campus space. In addition, the university campus today is to be considered as non-confirming sphere that intermediates between the urban space and the local community. Accordingly, today's many universities do not verify the boundary between inside and outside of the campus, but instead, they open the camps toward the local community and the city to accommodate new roles and functions as a part of the city. Such endeavors are proved in the recent public projects such as the Improvement of streets around the campus area and an establishment of fine urban sight.
Accordingly, a so called campus town area is to be reconsidered to an extension of the campus space with its urban function. But, while the peculiarity of university campus space and the functions are disregarded, the most of the projects named with 'campus town' tend to place too much emphasis on the external appearance of the street; that is, an improvement of street image with signs, pavement, and lighting. Those projects usually result in vulgar decoration in the facade of the streets with heavy commercialization. The study, while avoiding any superficial and administrative approaches to an improvement of streets around the campus area and an establishment of fine urban sight, attempts to grasp the fundamental attribute in the moment when the extension of the campus meets the urban space, and to explore any possible methods by which both the campus and the surroundings act as an urban public sphere.
The main focus is placed on how to secure urban public sphere with respect to the structural relationship between the university campus and the local community. In addition, the study will mainly recognize the importance of spatial structure of the streets around the campus, which reflects the characters of the university both in space and in programs.