The intensifying gated exclusiveness of apartment complex boundary design in Seoul, Korea

Abstract

In Seoul, apartment complexes have proliferated over the past half-century with distinctive spatial and morphological characteristics. From the 1980s, aggressive housing policies by the developmental state drove massive construction of apartment complexes, ensuring housing supply and the restructuring of society to a modern lifestyle. Over time, developments shifted to become more market-driven and luxury high-rise apartment complexes increased, reflecting the trend towards socioeconomically homogeneous communities, which propelled self-contained gated communities. To understand the increasingly exclusive nature of apartment complexes, particularly the boundary where the inside (private) and outside (public) meet, this paper examines two apartment complex neighbourhoods made with different development methods: Mok-dong, a master-planned area by 'Housing Site Development' in the 1980s and Geumho-dong, a neighbourhood transformed by apartment complexes under 'Housing Redevelopment' from the 1980s to the present. The research focused on 28 complex's boundary, including the surrounding vertical borders, pedestrian paths, roadways, and access control. The results show two different patterns of gating process: additive closure among older complexes and innate closure of newly built complexes. However, by tracing these features over time, gating proved to be an intensifying phenomenon with the application of various elements and methods to secure the internalized complex infrastructure.