New Accumulation at Historic City Centre: Tongui-dong Urban Oasis

SPACE May 2025 (No. 690) 

Tongui-dong Urban Oasis is a complex project spanning multiple land parcels, including plot no. 3 in Tongui-dong located west of the Gyeongbokgung Palace. It consists of three key elements: T3 (named after Tongui-dong 3), a single house and a neighbourhood living facility, an inner traditional hanok Songwonjae (松園齋, meaning ‘house of pine garden’), and a garden. These components organically integrate residential, commercial, leisure, and cultural functions. The project had to navigate multiple constraints, including regulations relating to the Gyeongbokgung Palace’s status as a national cultural heritage site, the hanok-designated and recommended zones, as well as practical challenges such as land registry discrepancies or underground waterways, and the surrounding historic buildings. To justify the irregular plot boundaries, partial land exchange with neighbouring lots was enacted during the design process. Despite the technical complexity and arduous process, this became a multi-layered historic city project capable of embodying the unique identity of Doojing Hwang Architects (hereinafter DJHA). The project’s overarching vision reinforced its often complex processes, leading to its final form.

T3 is situated at the edge of Jahamun-ro 10-gil, marking the boundary between Tongui-dong and Changsung-dong. It is a small-scale mixed-use residential and commercial building, with neighbourhood living facilities occupying the basement to the second floor and residential spaces on the third and fourth floors. This is yet another example of the so-called ‘rainbow cake architecture’ that DJHA has pursued since around 2010. On a societal level, T3 contributes to restoring the dwindling resident population of Seoul’s historic city centre while also accommodating a floating population. Architecturally, the key challenge was how to handle the complex conditions and functions through a simple design. From this perspective, the Tongui-dong Urban Oasis avoided visually segmenting the different floor functions and instead integrated them within a unified architectural framework. Given the narrow, elongated, and irregularly shaped plot, elements with strict ...