Return, Recover and Recreate, these are the founding principles of the entry for the international competition for rehabilitating Mapo Oil Depot into a Cultural Depot Park. The reimaging of relics whose narrative combines the past, present and future. Located within an area surrounded by river banks with the Noeul and Haneul Parks on one side and the World Cup Stadium, the Digital Media Center and a residential district on the other, the project offers the chance to create a vital missing element to the neighbourhood, restoring it as an attractive new centre in the city.

The landscape’s contours have been respected and multiple cultural activities are enjoyed by the assimilation of five tanks in the mountain like park. These generic oil tanks help to structure the site and give the project a unique and strong identity. They reconnect the site to the city and then the site within itself. The containers are camouflaged to fit seamlessly within the site, blurring boundaries between nature, tanks and visitors. They are not the final destination but rather interactive points along visitor paths; they act as stations for exploration that are integrated into a bigger network involving the entire mountain from end to end

The metal from the tanks is recycled and redistributed under various forms across the site to create a new kind of natural space. They form welcoming pavilions that remind the visitors of the site’s industrial history. The project activates a stream of energy capable of regenerating the site, recovering the essence of the location, respecting what is existing and working in harmony with the strength of the mountain.