Racecourse & Equestrian Theme Park, Yeongcheon, Korea

Since the time of the ancient Greeks, man has dreamt of crea­ting a flying city. Like Atlantis, the mytho­lo­gi­cal under­wa­ter city, the city in the clouds is crea­ted in a pri­mor­dial ele­ment, not water this time, but air. From Jonathan Swift to Georges Lucas, and pas­sing by Jules Vernes, these floa­ting cities are both a sym­bol of phy­si­cal liberty and of spi­ri­tual ele­va­tion. In days gone by, the celes­tial city was a uto­pia, but in the 21st cen­tury it has become a much more rea­lis­tic pro­ject. It is not so much a ques­tion of flying as of ele­va­ting and of let­ting our­selves be gui­ded by this invi­ta­tion on a jour­ney of contem­pla­tion. In the skies, the hor­se­park is an air­borne city, a flying city that affords the most spec­ta­cu­lar views. Situated in a natu­rally hilly and woo­ded land­scape, our pro­ject ele­va­ted the race­course above the land so as to pre­serve the exis­ting flora. All of the func­tions and inte­gra­ted ame­ni­ties were inte­gra­ted into the struc­ture beneath the race­track, so that the eques­trian park could use the maxi­mum amount of natu­ral land­scape for horse riding and rela­ted acti­vi­ties, and the abso­lute mini­mum impact was cau­sed on the natu­ral land­scape. The whole com­plex was enti­rely self-suf­fi­cient in energy, nota­bly through bio-mass gas and geo-ther­mal energy pro­duc­tion.