KOREA REMADE

Designers: Students and faculty, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University (Korea, United States); Location: Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ); Year: 2017

Korea Remade explores alternative futures for a reunified Korean Peninsula through landscape design by providing social, economic, and cultural opportunities for Korean citizens. The landscape design studio focused on one of the most heavily fortified territories in the world, the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates North and South Korea, considering human re-habitation, natural restoration, and existing infrastructure. This includes scattered observatories, abandoned military bases, minefields, subterranean tunnels, as well as existing forests, estuaries, and wetlands. Proposals erase and redraw borders while addressing population displacement, live landmines, soil contamination, and the importance of scenic vistas through complex landscape reorganization and ecologies.

Image: DMZ Tourism Guide concept, 2018, landscape of waterbodies in the DMZ and its hinterlands, formed by the choreographed sequential explosion of landmines; © Jiawen Chen; reproduced courtesy of Jungyoon Kim, Niall Kirkwood, Yoonjin Park, and Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the President and Overseers of Harvard College