Moments of the Future’: Imagining the City and Monuments of Pyongyang in 2050

Abstract

The possibility of reconciliation between the two Koreas and a potential change of the political regime in North Korea raises the question of the urban futures of North Korean cities, which at the moment serve as a stage for power consolidation through the monumental propaganda of the present regime. This paper examines an urban design project that imagines urban future of Pyongyang in 2050 and its colossal socialist era monuments after an assumed unification. Instead of erasing the socialist past of the city by removing the existing monuments (which was the practice in other socialist countries), this project proposes adding new layers of monuments that would represent and commemorate the new political and economic realities of ‘unification,’ and at the same time preserve the identity and legibility of the city. This alternative strategy was made possible by combining design thinking with the scenario technique utilized in Future Studies. Within the framework of the established scenario and politico-economic circumstances it compels, the method of writing History of the future was developed as a tool for envisioning an urban reality of 2050 Pyongyang, from which the Grid of Moments project would arise. The resulting project, conceived within the fictional story, allows historical and future ideologies, represented by the historical and new monuments, to coexist in Pyongyang through concurrent and respective acknowledgement. In this way, the role of architecture is shifted from serving the political regime towards acting as a social critique, as well as inducing a social transformation. These thought strategies were enabled by approaching design through scenario and storytelling method developed within it, as it left space for more imagination and creativity, and introduced a degree of objectivity to the design process by allowing different ideologies to be considered.