Mixing an urban problematic with a tire transformation process, this project offers an original new shape to the cross between the Cheonggyecheon river and the Sewoon Building. The riverside is nowadays a nice and underestimated path for pedestrians flows and the Sewoon building’s skybridge is a nice link between an urban side and a public park on the north. Unfortunately, the link between these two paths is nowadays not very inviting, and that’s what this project wants to solve.
About the transformation process, tire materiality is very difficult to transform because of a process called vulcanisation, which makes it impossible to melt in order to give it a new shape. All the processes happening in the Sewoon building are low-tech and two types of products get out of the factory for the distribution. Firstly some fashionable tire-made shoes, that are either sold in the local shop on the riverside or exported in the shoe shops of the neighborhood, and secondly all the wastes of the process are sent to an energetic center, where they get incinerated for energetic valuation. This second output goes to the same place as usual old tires.
The challenge of the urban problematic is to offer an inviting link between these three levels: water, road and skybridge. The new infrastructure is not only proposing spatial links but also some new places of interaction between the different stakeholders. Pedestrians are able to see some of the manufacturing processes at the river level but are also directly invited to visit the local shop in front of the manufacture. At the road level, waste getting shredded can be seen. The goal is to offer as much transparency as possible to the pedestrians, who are also potential customers for the shoes. At the skybridge level, they are even invited to take part of the process with the refurbishing office, where they can come and give a new life to their shoes.