The way we occupy space is not free from capital. As the structure of capitalism becomes more solid, the pieces of ordinary life are gradually reorganized into goods and traded into the world to a deeper level. There’s a place where this objectification is most evident, and that’s the commercial space. The first commercial space in the city was the market, where goods from different regions were transported and traded on the streets. As capitalism developed over time, this commercial space also changed, and the productivity of modern industrialization increased from the street market to the ‘arcade’ covered with iron and glass, and modern escalators and air conditioners made a leap into the ‘mall’ which is a large indoor commercial space. And now, I would like to pay attention to the phenomenon of ‘hot place’ emerging as a new commercial space in the information age.
 
Traditional commercial areas were based on so-called “good-natured land” such as boulevards and transportation hubs, but the development of SNS, led by Instagram, made it possible for small stores to dig deep into alleys to avoid rent. These stores are not big signboards and transparent show windows, but rather instagramable images delivered on social media as their main survival strategy. “-Rodeo Street” and “-Ridan-gil.” These are the names that are often given to hot places around Seoul. Whatever the reason, these were all alleys with unique shops centered on a linear street called “road,” and this settled in people’s memories and naturally defined hot places as streets. The belief that ordinary alleys can also be meaningful has spread throughout the city, achieving the myth of the city.
 
But there is always gentrification at the end of this hot place mechanism. The stores that grew up with the help of SNS and created the place in the alley paradoxically cannot afford the rising rent with the popularity of the neighborhood and hand over the key to the large capital represented by the franchise. As this gentrification progresses, stores such as Starbucks, coin karaoke, and self-photo studios fill the streets in hot place nests where the place has disappeared, and as a result, we face repeated experiences of commercial streets everywhere. Among them, the self-photo studio is a commercial space popular among the so-called MZ-young generation, and is a representative unmanned industry that makes up for the low cost of customers with a high floating population. The profit structure of this self-photo studio was judged to serve as a measure of the gentrification of hot places due to its nature, and a self-photo studio in some hot places in Seoul - Hongdae, Bukchon, Seongsu, Songpa, Gwanak, Mangwon - and a defined hot place-centered horizontal analysis was conducted.
 
Meanwhile, in the center of Hongdae, a hot place with highly gentrification, a group of buildings with a length of about 216m was located in a unique shape. Called “Seogyo 365,” it originated from an unlicensed shantytown built on a cramped railroad when the Danginri Line, which used to be heading for the Danginri power plant, crossed the current Hongdae area. The railroad that disappeared when the power plant stopped operating was turned into a road and returned to the arms of the city, and only 3.65 million Seogyo remained to keep its traces.
 
In the process, the back facing Danginri Line was revealed as the main face rather than the front facing Seogyo Market, and this reversal of frontality served as an opportunity to promote the self-sustaining change of Seogyo 3655. Seogyo 365 has already become the home of an art community in front of Hongdae, creating a unique atmosphere, as the space was constantly expanded to meet the needs of users. Although this place also lost its past color as it became commercialized, the physical conditions of Seogyo 365 - scale, elevation, and movement - acted as factors that slowed the entry of relatively large capital, giving us a clue to sustainability.
 
With this project, I imagine a new commercial space divided into time and space along the hot place street, and propose commercial diversity and three-dimensional street scenery based on this. The main goal of this project is to break away from ownership and lease, indoor and outdoor dichotomous space occupation, and to allow gentrification to occur in a continuous process rather than a momentary disconnection of space based on the system. To this end, we focused on the area including Seogyo 365 and its surroundings, Seogyo Market Road and Parking Lot Road. Like Cedric Price’s “Fun Palace,” which advocates a “laboratory of fun and a college of free streets,” a fluid system that accommodates uncertain programs will act as a “hip-place” to help them remain in a “hip-place” state before emerging as a hot place.
 
First, we reorganized the urban structure of Seogyo 365 area. Currently, Seogyo 365 is a linear group of buildings with a width of about 6 m and a length of about 216 m. In addition, the parking lot length, which is about 12m wide to the east, and the Seogyo Market Road, which is about 6m wide to the west, are divided based on Seogyo 365. The two roads had a difference of about 1.2m, so the parking lot was about half a story higher than Seogyo Market Road, and it was difficult to travel between the roads due to Seogyo 365 located in the middle. Therefore, in order to provide a three-dimensional street view to the city, part of Seogyo 365 was demolished to build a public area, and the building group was emptied around the three sections where the surrounding roads gathered to effectively reveal it. The new open space along the stylobate left behind after demolition will be a small square that forms a nonlinear landscape surrounded by surrounding buildings.
 
Next, the goal was to minimize contact with the ground to maintain a smooth walking environment while being built on roads, which are public areas. The result is a cross-sectional system that uses a vierendeel truss with a grid of 2.4 meters above the pillar surrounding Seogyo 365 and embeds the tension cable supporting it at the boundary between Seogyo Market Road and the surrounding land. Over the parking lot that will be used as a walkway, under the floating vierendeel truss, we have installed a public walking lamp that can be shared with the surrounding buildings, and a frame that can be occupied and used by people driven by gentrification. They were arranged in several sections along the previously reorganized Seogyo 365 and placed vertical stairs at the boundary between the open space and the infrastructure formed on the cutting surface of Seogyo 365 to lay the foundation for entering the walking lamp from the square.
 
Based on a given system, Seogyo 365 has planned a catalog of elements that users can install themselves for phased occupancy of space. The frame, located approximately 1.2m above the walking lamp, is based on a 2.4m grid and serves as the basis for occupancy. Gentrifiers driven by rising rents use the horizontal elements of floors and roofs, vertical elements of walls and windows, and diagonal elements of stairs to occupy hot place streets in various ways before moving out to other areas. It is provided with a 2.4-meter cube module-based rental area that splits one floor of the building spatially, and combines them horizontally or vertically to create a three-dimensional commercial space.
 
Finally, I thought about how Seogyo 365 was operated, which was reborn as a hip palace. Many commercial programs located in the Hongdae area have their own spatiotemporal characteristics. However, the urban structure of the hot place area is limited to accommodating this diversity. If we move away from the existing annual rental method and apply a monthly, weekly, and daily split rental method, we can occupy and dismantle space in the short term based on the aforementioned elements of the catalog, spreading the unique location of Seogyo 365 across the street. As a result, the gentrifier, and the ‘hip’ atmosphere formed by them, will remain on the hip place streets and join the reservation of gentrification.