Architectural firm's exhibition reveals Seoul’s vanishing neighborhoods

Cho Jong-goo of Guga Urban Architecture holds up the model of "Jeonju House" (2020), Oct. 21. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

As pockets of Seoul undergo rapid redevelopment — from Hannam-dong to the disappearing industrial alleys around Sewoon Sangga — the question of how the city affects its inhabitants has never been more urgent.

In this context, Guga Urban Architecture’s 25th anniversary exhibition, "Fiction Non Fiction," serves as both a record of the lost neighborhoods where people lived, worked and interacted, and a proposal for how architecture can respect communities while challenging conventional ideas about how buildings are constructed and used.

The former Koo Young-sook Pediatrics Clinic hosts Guga Urban Architecture’s 25th anniversary exhibition, "Fiction Non Fiction," in central Seoul, Oct. 21. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

The exhibition is taking place in a pop-up venue, which in 1937 became the Pediatrics Clinic of Koo Young-sook — who would later serve as Korea's first health minister — when it relocated from another site. Designed by Park Gil-ryong (1898-1943), perhaps best known for the modernist Kansong Art Museum, the building is composed of staggered blocks rather than a single mass, and its aesthetic qualities remain appreciable despite some additions from the 1980s.

Situated next to the heavily trafficked Jogye Temple, the structure has been mostly closed to the public, making the exhibition a rare opportunity to explore both its interior and appreciate the philosophy Guga has pursued across three themed floors.

Fieldwork as urban memory

The first floor is devoted to Guga’s “Wednesday Field Trips,” a rigorous program that began with weekly excursions under director Cho Jong-goo. In this urban surveying process, Cho has focused largely on non-iconic architecture, sites where collective memory resides but that redevelopment inherently threatens.

To date, over 1,100 expeditions have been made across 105 Seoul neighborhoods to record building dimensions, map streets and create 3D scans. These efforts have produced a remarkable archive of photographs, sketches and hand-drawn maps, a selection of which is on display. The archive conveys that architecture must respond to the realities people actually face. It also offers a living record of how people have both shaped and borne the consequences of urban policy decisions in their neighborhoods over time.

Hannam-dong: Preservation through detail

A true museum piece, the exhibition’s centerpiece on the third floor is a 4-meter-wide model of Hannam-dong, where demolition has recently begun. The neighborhood is rendered with painstaking fidelity, eliciting audible gasps from visitors. Observers describe the model as both “imposing” and “intimate.” From afar, its scale conveys the enormity of the urban fabric; up close, visitors are drawn to the care evident in each detail.

Cho Jong-goo explains the Hannam-dong model (2025), Oct. 21. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

To put the model together, Cho mobilized his entire office, including interns, for two months. Hyundai Engineering & Construction, the redeveloper, had granted this period to document the area. The team meticulously recorded every alleyway, staircase, roofline and courtyard, then translated these observations into a model assembled like a puzzle.

Cho noted that “there was almost not a single repeated piece,” emphasizing the distinctiveness of each building and space. Some elements, such as trees or subtle textures, could not be fully captured, highlighting the limits of representation. The process challenged the team both technically and emotionally.

Hanok as a living system, temple as a layered experience

Impressive in a very different way from the scale of the Hannam-dong model is the meticulous attention to detail in Guga’s research on hanok (traditional Korean architecture) neighborhoods. A model of hanok alleys in Chebu-dong captures winding gas pipes, small gardens and flowerpots, wisteria vines over rooftops, a bicycle against a corrugated gutter and scenes of daily life, including children playing and a woman hanging laundry while watched by her dog.

Meanwhile, a map produced collaboratively with Gyeonggi University professor Lee Sang-gu shows the living veins of central Seoul's Seochon neighborhood with a bird’s-eye view, from a village bus route to people in the street and the movement of goods. Through these depictions, the work conveys not only the physical presence of hanok and alleys, but the shared and multiple lifestyles that emerge as a community interacts with urban spaces over time.

Chebu-dong hanok alley model is on display in front of a map of Seochon, Oct. 21. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

Moving through the second floor, visitors witness how the nonfiction of observation becomes architectural fiction, where lived reality meets design imagination. One highlight is the model of a house on the outskirts of Jeonju, North Jeolla Province. The gently overlapping, egg-shaped roof subtly evokes a hanok, while the tiered interior organizes the living area around a central guest room that acts as an interior courtyard and can open into a small performance space through sliding doors covered with paper.

Cho, whose understanding of the yard developed through close immersion in traditional homes and their residents’ lives, explained: “The courtyard is an extremely private space. It is introverted when used for family life and intimacy, yet it becomes extroverted when opened for music, gatherings or interaction with neighbors.”

The “Jeonju House” model is on display on the second floor of the exhibition, Oct. 21. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

Cho’s interventions in evolving tradition without sacrificing human scale extend beyond the home to temples. The Jingwan Temple project in northwestern Seoul's Eunpyeong District illustrates how architecture can accommodate diverse programs — cooking classes, templestays — while preserving the dignity of traditional form.

Transparent façades invite public engagement, and the structure blends concrete with hanok-inspired aesthetics. Lower levels host social and worldly activities, while upper floors guide visitors to quiet, meditative spaces, reflecting a careful orchestration of function, circulation and spiritual experience.

Architecture in defiance of policy

"Fiction Non Fiction" gains added resonance against the backdrop of the fifth Seoul Biennale of Art and Architecture at Songhyeon Green Plaza and other nearby locations.

Long before the Biennale asked how to make Seoul “radically more human,” Cho and Guga Urban Architecture had quietly been developing the answer. Through meticulous modeling, field records forged through sweat, perseverance and care, and a willingness to listen to the city, the firm’s 25-year track record demonstrates that architecture can stimulate the mind, foster interaction and preserve cultural identity, all while addressing ecological imperatives.

The exhibition is open every day at 10 a.m. until Nov. 11. It closes at 7 p.m., which extends until 9 p.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Foreign visitors receive free admission.

Jack Greenberg works as an analyst/researcher and freelance writer. His current focus is on heritage and conservation issues, historical memory debates, truth-seeking and reconciliation and civilian massacres of the 1950-53 Korean War. He was the recipient of the Global Korea Scholarship and earned a master’s in international studies at Korea University. He is also an alumnus of McGill University.