Thesis Abstract on Octorber 13, 2010

(Photos: Seoul Performace Art Center Design Proposal By Jean Nouvel)

Thesis Abstract_James J. Lee on October 13, 2010

Sutrarranean Consciousness

Due to the excessive level of emissions of greenhouse gases, especially since the modern industrialization, the average temperature of Earth’s near-surface air and oceans has continued to rise. This increase in global temperature is causing sea levels to rise and changing the amount and pattern of precipitation, including retreat of glaciers, permafrost, and sea ice as well as expansion of subtropical deserts. This abnormal weather phenomena and the expansion of uninhabitable areas will eventually drive human population towards more stable and safer places or infrastructures like cities. Otherwise, new notion of built environment within this extreme climatic location must be introduced and redefined.

The emergence of the notion of the mega city and the unstoppable human desire of creating a permanent shelter from extreme climate conditions resulted in the idea of an underground city. Today, these underground cities are located in many different places around the world. They are certainly provoking new ways of understating and occupying the underground space. Although these existing underground facilities throughout the world provide some models for future development, they are all limited in scale, in use, or in their lack of a comprehensive vision for the total city environment. Unlike today’s underground city, future underground cities would completely alter the existing perception. What if this new notion of the underground city is realized: How should we as architects respond to this new urban from? What kinds of different spatial and environmental quality do we need to consider in designing inhabitable spaces under these circumstances? What must we as architects do to create subsurface space that will avoid or alleviate the psychological and physiological problems associated with being underground?

My thesis will be initiated with a precedent-based research on underground spaces. By studying both the vernacular and existing underground development, the thesis will reformat its different typology through various types of diagrammatic representation such as informational mapping and sectional diagrams. At the end, I hope to pursue an architectural or spatial project that proposes innovative planning, design, and construction of future underground spaces in a particular location. As a complement to more detailed planning and research studies, it will be useful to examine the vision of extensive underground complexes, even entire cities that have been proposed by futuristic planners and designers. In addition, other considerations which will impact the design of the systems of the project such as its culture and inhabitable conditions; air (ventilation) and light, will be taken into account to be further investigated.

I intend to produce a set of drawings representing and proposing new urban form in the future underground of a particular city. The drawings will be represented both in plans and sections as well as through other means of visualization. In addition, a physical model of the proposed underground space will be constructed. The model will represent the relationship between inhabitants and the artificial built environment under the designed circumstances.