How much land in London sits wasted under major roads and motorways, dark, damp and unloved, perhaps used for car-parking or a sports centre, but otherwise sitting empty and neglected. If London’s Mayor stands any change of achieving his declared major increase in housing provision and also his support for the ongoing cultural success of London, when affordable space and housing for artists is a difficult issue, imaginative solutions will be required, thinking “outside the box”. 

Seoul in Korea is a fast-growing city with similar challenges to London and the Seoul Metropolitan Government has developed plans that challenge the standard answers with proposals to “recycle the city” and bring underutilised spaces into use and transform them with new housing and urban spaces and gardens.  Seoul for example has discovered that it has potentially 161 development sites under highways, 75% of which are in public ownership, while flood basins along the Han River provide essential infrastucture but are wasted-land assets. Can the needs for such essential infrastructure and for affordable housing be imaginatively combined?  As an indication of some of the pressures, 60,000 artists graduate from Korean universities every year, who can contribute to Korea’s blossoming cultural industries, but they need somewhere affordable to live and work.

Linked to a conference held earlier this month “Architecture and The Evolving Commons – London and Seoul”, nine projects that are part of Seoul’s answer to these challenges and opportunities are on display at the Korean Cultural Centre UK in London.  These include new housing on 161 sites under urban highways such as the Container Housing project at Yeong-deungpo, public housing and community facilities for students and young professionals in 52 flood basins, designed to reflect the apparent conflict with the basins’ essential use, modular housing in Suseo-dong for students to be built above an operational car park, public cooperative housing for artists at Malli-dong integrated into the fabric of the city and redevelopment of the former Mapo Oil Depot, with paths connecting into the adjacent World Cup Area.

In addition, the plans propose making use of existing assets such as the Seoul Station Overpass, built in the 1970’s and planned for demolition, but now proposed to be converted into a skygarden to improved connectivity between different parts of the city.  

The proposals not only maintain infrastructure and provide new housing solutions, but also learn lessons from the past to ensure connectivity with communities and provision of public spaces which are essential for successful city living.  

Londoners’ views are likely to be that housing under motorways is less-than desirable, and it could only be funded by public finance, but is must be worth the Mayor inviting architectural ideas for an experiment on an suitable site where it is possible to join the housing into the adjacent community?