Deconstruction/Construction: The Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project in Seoul

The restoration of the Cheonggyecheon River that runs through Seoul, Korea, in a mere twenty-nine months—transitioning from an outmoded highway into a multipurpose performative infrastructure piece of unprecedented size—merits recognition as a seminal project in contemporary urban design. This remarkable achievement recovers the biological and social ecology of the city and demonstrates the profound ability of design at the urban scale to provoke positive transformation effectively over lar...