Seoul Co-Living Wolgok Youth Platform

The Wolgok Youth Platform is an experimental social housing project initiated by Habitat for Humanity Korea and the SeongBuk-Gu - one of the local governments of Seoul - that combines the homes for low-income youths, their job training and start-up business platforms, and new public spaces for the surrounding neighborhood. The project explores the notion of openness and sharing in collective housing typologies beyond the limitations of the extremely commodified high- rise apartment complexes of Seoul, while aiming to frame the expanded concept of home that, while preserving individuality and intimacy, is open and tightly connected to the multiple scales and operations of the city. The critical spaces for the resident youths’ work and learning are combined with much needed community functions including a branch library and community meeting rooms and become the key infrastructure for the collaboration and exchange between the resident youths and adjacent communities, universities, and businesses. The new public park under the lifted volume transformed from an old surface parking lot becomes a new local common open to everyone. The project provides the marginalized youths of Seoul with much needed housing and a firm basis for growth while establishing productive and transformative relationships with the surrounding city.