This paper examines and characterizes the spatial transformation of Chongno, the oldest and one of the busiest streets in the historic area in Seoul. The question is to what extent we can understand the complex visual urban landscape in relation to the less complex spatial logic of urbanism. The paper develops a theoretical framework by investigating how the street-commercial architecture-residential architecture are related in the urban space and how they have been transformed in the process of commercialization and urbanization. The arguments of the paper are based on a comparative analysis of the chosen area in two different periods: between the late fourteenth century and the present. The paper argues that Chongno area originally consisted of the juxtaposition between the inside-planar and the outside-linear morphologies and these two spatial paradigms still function as an underlying logic to generate building morphologies today.
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