© Negativ

Hongik University Seoul Campus

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a campus is defined as “the buildings of a university or college and the land around them.” In the typical image that illustrates this definition, "the buildings” appear politely distanced with “the land around them” a generous stretch of green land. That is the case of the Oxford University, but also of many campuses in Korea. The Hongik Seoul Campus, however, is an exception. Built in the 1950s on the slopes of the Wau Mountain in Seoul, it has been rapidly saturated with buildings, reaching the limits of expansion. “The land around them” hardly exists today. It has become “the land between them.”