Mapo Oil Tank Cultural Park
Idea for the renovation of abandoned oil tanks in Mapo-gu Seoul, Korea.
On the west side of the city of Seoul there are five oil tanks abandoned by the Ministry of Defense from the mid 90. They used to be critical for the defense of the city during the seventies and eighties as energy back up in case of war attacks and became forgotten for a couple of decades. These empty tanks are potential hosts of activity and the proposed project attempts to recover and revitalize this part of the city by giving new programmatic use to the existing tanks such as library, performance activities, permanent exhibition or temporary exhibitions.
The approach to architectural design is of a maximum respect to the existing condition. We believe there is a certain beauty and soul in the existing decadent tanks and therefore this characteristic should not be removed by the new architectural intervention.
In order to minimize changes on the existing tank configuration, three basic design principles are proposed: creation of a new interior skin to solve the air treatment of the interior spaces, creation of a new structure to support the new skin independently for the tank’s own structure and, finally, access level to the tanks below the existing retaining walls.
