Keyword: Artificial Inteligence, Spatial Database, Spatial Modeling, Web Developement, Data Analysis
Research
Design
This undergraduate thesis reimagines Seoul’s 1,095 children’s parks as a latent network of civic and ecological infrastructure—an overlooked urban system capable of generating energy, supporting public life, and enhancing environmental resilience. It proposes “chloroplast parks,” a new typology that integrates play, architecture, and renewable energy within a single urban framework.
Children’s parks across Seoul collectively cover over 2.1 million square meters of land, forming one of the city’s largest yet least recognized public territories. Once designed for neighborhood play, many now sit idle within dense urban fabric. The thesis reframes these dispersed green fragments as a powerful testing ground for rethinking the role of small-scale public spaces in shaping sustainable civic infrastructure.
Employing a genetic-algorithm-based solar optimization model, the research analyzed solar radiation across representative park sites to identify optimal geometries for maximizing photovoltaic efficiency while maintaining human-scale spatial quality. Through 3,500 computational iterations, the study produced “uplifted ground” structures that increase sunlight exposure, generate renewable energy, and create shaded public areas beneath—turning energy performance into civic experience.
Conducted in Seoul in 2016 as part of the Undergraduate Thesis Program at Hongik University’s HSA Studio, this individual project integrated environmental computation, urban analysis, and architectural design to propose a new civic energy framework for the city.
The study revealed that if half of Seoul’s children’s parks incorporated photovoltaic systems, they could produce approximately 6% of the city’s annual electricity demand, equivalent to the output of the Ravenswood Power Plant. More importantly, it reconceptualized these small urban parks as a collective civic energy network—a green archipelago linking ecology, play, and infrastructure into a new model for sustainable urban life.