Within the context of various nations and cultures throughout history, monumental architecture has symbolized collective identity. An example of this can be seen in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). In the 1980s, the South Korean government erected a flagpole in the village of Daeseong-dong within the DMZ. The North Korean government countered by constructing the taller Panmunjom flagpole in the village of Kijŏng-dong, igniting what some have termed the “flag wars.” Their imposing heights ostensibly signify national pride and ideological resolve, visible to those both near and far. Even in a highly militarized and contested space, South and North Korea continue to express their aspirations and values through architecture and the built environment.
This diorama challenges the ideological imposition of meaning attributed to these structures by eschewing all iconography and constructed demarcations. By illustrating an imaginative series of vignettes where the flourishing natural landscape of the DMZ transcends its imagined boundaries and intermingles with the two towering structures and their surrounding infrastructure, the diorama presents a tenuous depiction of the relationship between the built environment of the DMZ and the ground it occupies. It encourages viewers to identify elements of the constructed space that prevail in the absence of habitation. In this way, the foliage and greenery enveloping both unnamed settlements question the temporality of the constructed spaces and whether the DMZ’s constructions are truly monumental, unalterable, and universalizing.
Obscuring the formal orthogonal logic of human settlement and years of political tension imprinted on the landscape, the diorama is an ecological utopia with energetic sweeping arms of movement emanating from the original DMZ oasis. While some may interpret the relationship between the natural and the constructed as combative, others may find endearing moments where nature seems to prop up and adaptively reuse the crumbling structures.
