Archinect - News

New photos depicting North Korea's 'Architecture of Control'

2024-05-20T18:41:00-04:00

Reuters has published images of the DPRK's showcase architecture in a new photo essay titled 'Architecture of control: North Korea's bizarre, post-modern cityscapes,' which shows a rare glimpse at the post-modern building activity in Pyongyang.

It comes as the state pursues a new building program meant to yield 50,000 new residences in the capital by about this time next year, an effort aided by labor from military academy cadets and meant to match its housing shortage at "Pyongyang Speed."

The architectural designers of most of these buildings remain unknown. Their likely source is the nearby Paektusan Academy of Architecture.

North Korea breaks ground on the next phase of its 50,000-unit development plan

2022-02-28T11:12:00-05:00

North Korea has started work on a sprawling 10,000-apartment residential project as the country embarks on a housing drive in its capital, Pyongyang. Though few design details have been disclosed, digital renderings of the development show towers rising on both sides of a leafy boulevard in an area of the capital called Hwasong. A larger skyscraper, which appears to be at least 40 stories tall, is also depicted in the plans.

North Korea says it is on track to develop some 50,000 new residences in the capital in phases within the next 2-3 years. The rogue state has faced considerable housing shortages in the past and now looks to rebound from two years of economically-stifled developmental setbacks to create a "new world of a prosperous power where the people enjoy the highest dignity and the best happiness."

Much of Pyongyang’s transformation into a “socialist fairyland” stems in large part from plans put forth in a 2016 directive from leader Kim Jung Un and developed mostly anonymously and at “Pyongyang Speed” by the Paektusan Academy of Architecture. The primacy of the construction push is being further underscored by the incorporation of laborers taken from the state’s various military academies, which are being leaned on for the first time in an attempt to overcome supply chain issues related to economic sanctions and a marked decline in trade with China.

North Korea's Kim Jong Un renews call for rapid housing construction

2021-04-06T20:15:00-04:00

Strict supervision over every construction process must be exercised, building materials economized in every way with high demand, accidents of all kinds prevented and excellent construction experience introduced...

Looks like bombs aren't the only things Kim Jong Un is building. And, aren't we more dynamite-centric on the subject matter?

Now that they have the know-how...

We will need to remember something we have *forgotten.

*Public housing.

Leaving Pyongyang: Photographer catches rare glimpse of life and architecture in North Korea's hinterland

2018-03-29T15:08:00-04:00

Leaving Pyongyang’s grand architecture, showcase avenues and spotless public spaces for the unvarnished reality of North Korea’s countryside is a sobering experience. Despite years of sanctions and increasing international isolation, Pyongyang looks wealthier in 2018 than I have ever seen it in 15 years of travel to the North. [...] But once the train rolls past the industrial belt around the capital, it’s a story of grinding poverty that clashes with the official image projected in Pyongyang.

Berlin-based travel writer Tom Masters gets the rare opportunity of a train ride from the bustling metropolis (by comparison) of Pyongyang through the northern backcountry of the secretive nation across the border to Vladivostok in Russia: "Every station along the way is almost identical, with two giant portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il hanging on its exterior, both smiling incongruously against the bleakness of their surroundings."

Ryugyong and beyond: visiting Pyongyang's tourist hotels

2018-02-06T13:42:00-05:00

To suggest that its quarter-of-a-century presence in the rapidly expanding Pyongyang skyline merits the international mockery it has received—fatalistically nicknamed the “hotel of doom” by Western journalists, labeled an architectural sin, and deemed the biggest mystery in Pyongyang—would consign Ryugyong to the realm of compulsive political affect ranging from imaginative resentment to the very policies governing U.S.-North Korean relations since American involvement in the Korean War.

Jake Valente's piece for Failed Architecture takes a closer look at the small number of Pyongyang tourist hotels that visitors to North Korea's capital are constricted to. "When traveling to Pyongyang, one chooses between the Yanggakdo, Koryo, Sosan, Pothonggang, Haebangsan, Pyongyang, Ryanggang, and Youth Hotel, the eight hotels currently hosting foreigners."

Rumors circulate around world's largest unoccupied building in North Korea as the country tests its second missile

2017-08-01T16:21:00-04:00

For nearly 30 years, the 105-story tower has been a mystery. Located in Pyongyang, North Korea, the Ryugyong Hotel was billed to be the world's tallest hotel but has yet to host a guest, making it instead, the world's largest unoccupied building. But, on Friday, the country took down some walls around the construction area causing many to speculate that the building might finally open in the near future.

Dubbed the "Hotel of Doom" by Western media, the building broke ground way back in 1987, with construction expected to take only two years. An overly optimistic goal from the get-go, construction dragged on until 1992 when it was halted by a major economic crisis in North Korea caused by the fall of the Soviet Union. In 2008, construction on the hotel's exterior resumed with Egypt's Orascom Telecommunications Holdings injecting $30 million into the project. Upon completion of the buildings' exterior in 2011, the international mobile network company supported another $15 million to ...

What could go wrong? North Korean construction workers are being given crystal meth to finish projects faster

2016-08-12T14:13:00-04:00

project managers at a building site in North Korea’s capital Pyongyang are openly supplying their exhausted work force with powerful methamphetamines called “ice,” North Korean sources say. [...] Officials in charge of the project are pushing workers hard to finish frame construction on the buildings, which include a 70-story high-rise apartment building and at least 60 other structures, before the weather gets too cold, sources said.

The construction project in question appears to be Ryomyong Street, a so-called "Pyonghattan" for its giant scope and reportedly the country's tallest apartments. According to a report in Foreign Policy, the spread of methamphetamine (aka "ice") first began in North Korea during the 1990s, when it was being produced and sold as a medication.

Another speedy “Pyonghattan” skyscraper project is underway

2016-06-29T14:55:00-04:00

Hoping to show the world his country is doing just fine despite sanctions and outside pressure over its nuclear weapons program, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has put his soldier-builders to work on yet another major [skyscraper] project Pyongyang’s new Pyonghattan, officially called “Ryomyong Street,” is to have the country’s tallest apartment building, at 70 stories, along with a 50-story building and a handful of smaller ones in the 30-40 story range.

“[Kim's] soldier-builders are now putting up the frames for each new floor at the reportedly breakneck-pace of 14 hours to get it all done by the end of the year.”

Is Pyongyang's eccentric architecture only skin deep?

2016-05-20T14:09:00-04:00

Some Pyongyang-watchers believe the changes are merely skin deep, and do not portend or reflect deeper political or economic changes. ‘There is still all this state influence. There is no free development [...] The production of the city has not yet changed. Only the shapes of the buildings have changed.’ ‘There is this thing among North Koreans about developing...an architecture that is reflective of their society. So what is an architecture that reflects their society?‘

‘Pyongyang Speed:’ North Korea miraculously cranks out massive residential development for scientists in only one year

2015-12-18T13:46:00-05:00

North Korea held a ceremony on Tuesday to celebrate Mirae Scientists Street, the residential sector dedicated for scientists or engineers of North Korea. Mirae (“Future”) Scientists Street, located in the center of Pyongyang, directly next to Pyongyang Station adjacent to the Taedong River, is nearing completion. [...] Wednesday’s report emphasized the term “Pyongyang Speed,” the idea that North Korean workers can produce miraculously fast construction speeds.

"KCNA reports revealed that one of the buildings is 53 floors high, designed with an artistic exterior and guided under Kim Jong Un’s orders. The street also had a kindergarten, daycare center, school, stores, sports park and more, according to KCNA."

h/t CTBUH

Pyongyang's inner Wes Anderson shines through in its architecture, then and now

2015-11-03T13:24:00-05:00

'Let us turn the whole country into a socialist fairyland,'...Throughout the city, you now encounter the recurring colour schemes of salmon and teal, or pink and baby blue...These new spaces look like they have been assembled from crisp, unreal planes of colour and exude an anaesthetising aesthetic, candy-coloured decoys that distract from a reality of mass poverty across the country.

Pyonghattan & water parks: North Korea's new architectural ambitions

2015-09-14T13:35:00-04:00

“Let us usher in a great golden age of construction,” exhorts one of the 310 official patriotic slogans published this year. The ambition is already evident in the number of cranes that dot the skyline [...]. The most prominent structures are the 47-storey shafts of the Changjon Street apartments, an 18-tower complex completed last year in less than 12 months and nicknamed “Pyonghattan” by foreign diplomats. But other emerging skyscrapers go undiscussed and unphotographed [...].

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As bicycle ownership in North Korea rises, Pyongyang introduces bike lanes

2015-07-14T12:59:00-04:00

North Korea has installed cycle lanes on major thoroughfares in Pyongyang in an apparent bid to cut down on pedestrian accidents, as more residents are able to afford to buy bicycles. Bicycles are an expensive but increasingly popular mode of transport for many in the country where private car ownership, although on the rise, is still rare. [...] As recently as 2014, cycling was still illegal for women, though the ban was much flouted.

North Korean architect of new Pyongyang airport reportedly executed by Kim Jong Un

2015-06-29T13:31:00-04:00

North Korea's propaganda machine has spent days promoting a new airport in Pyongyang, showcasing the building's sleek glass walls and espresso stations. But the images, which feature Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, fail to mention that the building's principal designer was likely executed last year because Kim was unhappy with the design.

While the starving population of North Korea will likely never going to enjoy the airport's amenities (under the current circumstances), it has shown more direct feedback to other key-interest projects of the supreme despot, like the 46-story Taedong River Apartment Towers which remain unoccupied from floors 20 and up due to frequent power shortages and unreliable elevators.

North Koreans hesitate to move into Kim Jong Un's shiny, new apartment towers

2015-06-03T15:39:00-04:00

Despite seeing completion last October, following orders from leader Kim Jong Un, only half of the units of a major apartment complex built near Pyongyang’s Taedong River are currently occupied. [...] “The elevator runs only during breakfast, lunch, and dinner hours, so for long spans of time it will be impossible to get to the 40th floor,” the source said. “There isn’t even a place for people to put their bicycles, which are the most fundamental tools for people’s livelihoods.”

Lessons from North Korean urbanism

2014-01-08T15:43:00-05:00

They conceive of urban space as space owned by the public, not space for real estate development.

Much of the North Korean news that reaches the United States reads like tabloid hearsay, as glimpses of a totalitarian dictatorship rife with human rights violations are peeked through Dennis Rodman and military showboating. NK News, an independent and private news source based in Washington, D.C., is unique to both online journalism and treatment of its subject, in its rigorous and impressively connected focus on North Korean life and policy. Written from sources both in and out of the DPRK, NK News will most certainly get you to think differently about North Korea.

In part one of his interview with Dongwoo Yim, founder of the firm PRAUD and author of Pyongyang, and Pyongyang After, NK News' Academic / Research Director Gianluca Spezza takes a step back from current politics to ask Yim about the past and future of capital city Pyongyang's urban development. If Korea were to reunify, how would Pyongyang posture itself against Seoul, South Korea's megapolis capital?

Most of Nor...

Kingdom of Kitsch

2012-12-31T12:12:00-05:00

The oversize public monuments and buildings in the capital of North Korea confirm the subservience of the citizen to the state and display the ghastly aesthetic imperatives of totalitarian art.

The WSJ's Eric Gibson reviews the book "Architectural and Cultural Guide: Pyongyang," edited by Philipp Meuser, a German architect and architectural historian.

North Korea Ryugyong 'Hotel of Doom' may open next year

2012-11-05T15:30:00-05:00

A delegation from the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Korea, which inspected the building almost 15 years ago, concluded it was beyond repair and its lift shafts crooked. But in 2008 an Egyptian company, Orascom Telecom, which operates a mobile network in North Korea, began equipping the building. Mr Wittwer said the hotel will "partially, probably" open for business next year. But original plans for 3,000 hotel rooms and three revolving restaurants have been greatly scaled back.