뉴욕 타임스퀘어와 영등포 타임스퀘어 — 도시론으로 다시 읽는 〈Living Geometry 2026〉
‘타임스퀘어’라는 이름은 두 개의 도시 위에 겹쳐져 있다. 하나는 렘 콜하스(Rem Koolhaas)의 〈Delirious New York〉이 ‘맨해튼주의(Manhattanism)’의 결정체로 불러낸 뉴욕 타임스퀘어, 다른 하나는 옛 경방(京紡) 영등포공장 부지 위에 솟은 서울 영등포 타임스퀘어다. 〈Living Geometry 2026〉은 이 두 번째 ‘타임스퀘어’의 지하 2층 영등포아트스퀘어에서, 도시를 ‘안트로포스피어(Anthroposphere) — 끊임없이 맥동하는 유기체’로 다시 읽는다.
두 개의 타임스퀘어, 한 개의 명제
20세기 뉴욕 타임스퀘어는 광고와 전광판, 군중과 자본이 동시에 같은 평면 위에 적층되는 도시 무대였다. 콜하스가 ‘맨해튼주의’라 부른 것 — 격자 위의 초밀집, 프로그램의 공존, 표면의 과잉 — 은 도시를 단일 기능의 합이 아니라 ‘서로 다른 시간성과 의도가 뒤섞이는 두꺼운 표면’으로 보게 했다. 〈Living Geometry 2026〉의 큐레이토리얼 전제는 그 명제와 한 호흡으로 잇닿아 있다. ‘도시는 정지된 콘크리트의 집합물을 넘어, 인간·비인간·기술이 끊임없이 맥동하는 유기체 — 즉 Living Geometry 다.’
다만 무대는 옮겨졌다. 영등포는 한국 산업화의 거점이자 금융·비즈니스의 중심이며 동시에 문화·예술적 실험이 역동하는 무대다. 영등포 타임스퀘어는 옛 경방 영등포공장 부지를 재개발해 2009년 개관한 복합 공간으로, ‘산업 시대 → 후기 산업·디지털 시대’의 전환을 그대로 떠안고 있다. 〈Living Geometry 2026〉은 그 전환 위에서 작업이 전개된다.
작품으로 읽는 도시론
강이연 〈Technosphere〉는 인류가 구축한 인공적 물리 시스템을 ‘제6의 권역’ — 생물권 너머의 새로운 지질학적 층위 — 으로 시각화한다. 알고리즘으로 파편화된 도시 구조물이 스스로 증식하고 질서를 찾아가는 과정은, 콜하스가 〈Delirious New York〉에서 그린 ‘설계자의 의도를 넘어 자생하는 격자 도시’의 21세기 판본처럼 읽힌다.
서민혁 〈City'scape + Tied · 떨어지지 않는 풍경〉은 ‘문’이라는 물리적 장치 + TV 스크린 + 인터랙티브 설치를 결합한 상황 디자인이다. 화려한 전광판을 등지고 골목으로 들어가는 흐름 — 뉴욕이든 영등포든, 모든 타임스퀘어가 동시에 갖는 ‘외부의 광장 / 내부의 뒤편’이라는 이중 구조 — 위에서, 관객은 문을 여는 행위를 통해 일상적인 도시 공간 속의 사적인 순간과 마주한다.
최정윤 〈Banpo-Xism · 반포자이즘〉은 ‘위치(반포)와 브랜드(자이)’라는 2차원 평면으로 환원된 한국 부동산의 가치 체계를 비평한다. 〈플랫랜드(Flatland)〉의 코미디라는 작가의 표현 — 그리고 적분(integration)을 통해 평면이 미분다양체로 펼쳐지는 구조 — 은, 뉴욕 타임스퀘어의 광고 평면과 영등포 타임스퀘어의 ‘브랜드 아파트 광고 평면’이 같은 도시 표면을 다른 알고리즘으로 깎아내는 풍경임을 시사한다.
황인태 〈Vessel〉은 서울시 1년치 이동 데이터를 기하학적 형태로 변환하고, 맥박 센서로 관객의 심박을 그 ‘도시의 박동’과 공명시킨다. 도시를 거대한 유기체로 보는 명제 — 〈Delirious New York〉의 ‘the culture of congestion’이 인간 군중의 박동이라 불렀던 것 — 가, 여기서는 데이터와 생체 신호의 결합이라는 21세기적 형태로 옮겨진다. 서민혁 〈Post-Vanishing〉은 인간이 사라진 후의 도시를 세 생명체 — 물질·연결·표면 — 로 형상화하며, 이 ‘맥동하는 도시’의 다음 장면을 상상한다.
왜 이 비교를 보는가
뉴욕 타임스퀘어를 ‘도시 광고 표면의 결정체’로 만든 것은 20세기 매체였다. 영등포 타임스퀘어를 같은 결정체로 이어가게 만드는 것은 21세기 매체 — 데이터·센서·생성형 AI·알고리즘 — 다. 〈Living Geometry 2026〉은 그 전환 위에서 ‘도시는 어떤 기하학으로 살아있는가’를 묻는다. 미디어아트·도시론·인류세 담론에 관심 있는 관객에게 권한다.
New York Times Square × Yeongdeungpo Times Square — Urban Theory and Living Geometry 2026
The name 'Times Square' lies over two cities at once: Rem Koolhaas's New York Times Square — pulled into Delirious New York as the crystallisation of 'Manhattanism' — and Seoul's Yeongdeungpo Times Square, risen on the old Kyungbang factory grounds. Living Geometry 2026, on the B2 level of the latter, re-reads the city as the Anthroposphere — an organism in continual pulse.
Two Times Squares, one proposition
Twentieth-century New York Times Square was the urban stage where advertising surfaces, crowds, and capital stacked simultaneously onto the same plane. What Koolhaas called 'Manhattanism' — hyper-density on a grid, the coexistence of programs, the surplus of surface — let the city be read not as the sum of single functions but as a thick surface where times and intentions tangle. The curatorial premise of Living Geometry 2026 picks up that proposition in one continuous breath: 'the city, beyond a stilled aggregate of concrete, is a Living Geometry — an organism in continual pulse, where human, non-human, and technology entangle.'
The stage has shifted, though. Yeongdeungpo is a hub of Korean industry and finance, and at the same time a stage of cultural and artistic experiment. Yeongdeungpo Times Square — a complex opened in 2009 on redeveloped Kyungbang factory grounds — carries the transition from industrial era to post-industrial / digital era straight into its body. Living Geometry 2026 unfolds across that transition.
Reading urban theory through the works
Yiyun Kang's Technosphere visualises the artificial physical systems built by humanity as a 'sixth sphere' — a new geological stratum beyond the biosphere. Fragmented urban structures, processed by algorithm, multiply and find their own order — readable as a twenty-first-century edition of the grid-city Koolhaas saw 'self-perpetuating beyond its designers' intent' in Delirious New York.
Minhyeok Seo's City'scape + Tied is a situational design that fuses a physical door, a TV screen, and an interactive installation. Across the doubled structure that every Times Square holds at once — the spectacular outward plaza and the quiet inward back-alley — visitors turn away from the bright signage, walk into the alley, and through the simple act of opening a door encounter a private moment inside the everyday city.
Jeanyoon Choi's Banpo-Xism critiques Korea's real-estate value system, reduced to the two-dimensional plane of location (Banpo) and brand (Xi). The artist's invocation of Flatland — and the structure where 'integration' opens that plane back into a differentiable manifold — suggests that the advertising plane of New York Times Square and the apartment-brand plane of Yeongdeungpo Times Square are the same urban surface carved by different algorithms.
Intae Hwang's Vessel translates a year of Seoul's mobility data into geometric form, then synchronises a visitor's pulse with that 'beat of the city' through a sensor. The proposition of city-as-organism — what Delirious New York once called 'the culture of congestion,' the throb of a human crowd — moves here into a twenty-first-century form: data joined to a biometric signal. Minhyeok Seo's Post-Vanishing imagines the next scene of that pulsing city, after humans, as three living forms standing for matter, connection, and surface.
Why the comparison
What made New York Times Square the crystallisation of the urban advertising surface was twentieth-century media. What lets Yeongdeungpo Times Square continue that crystallisation is twenty-first-century media — data, sensors, generative AI, algorithm. Living Geometry 2026 asks, on top of that shift, what geometry the city is alive in. Recommended for visitors interested in media art, urban theory, and Anthropocene discourse.
New York Times Square × Yeongdeungpo Times Square — Urban Theory and Living Geometry 2026
The name 'Times Square' lies over two cities at once: Rem Koolhaas's New York Times Square — pulled into Delirious New York as the crystallisation of 'Manhattanism' — and Seoul's Yeongdeungpo Times Square, risen on the old Kyungbang factory grounds. Living Geometry 2026, on the B2 level of the latter, re-reads the city as the Anthroposphere — an organism in continual pulse.
Two Times Squares, one proposition
Twentieth-century New York Times Square was the urban stage where advertising surfaces, crowds, and capital stacked simultaneously onto the same plane. What Koolhaas called 'Manhattanism' — hyper-density on a grid, the coexistence of programs, the surplus of surface — let the city be read not as the sum of single functions but as a thick surface where times and intentions tangle. The curatorial premise of Living Geometry 2026 picks up that proposition in one continuous breath: 'the city, beyond a stilled aggregate of concrete, is a Living Geometry — an organism in continual pulse, where human, non-human, and technology entangle.'
The stage has shifted, though. Yeongdeungpo is a hub of Korean industry and finance, and at the same time a stage of cultural and artistic experiment. Yeongdeungpo Times Square — a complex opened in 2009 on redeveloped Kyungbang factory grounds — carries the transition from industrial era to post-industrial / digital era straight into its body. Living Geometry 2026 unfolds across that transition.
Reading urban theory through the works
Yiyun Kang's Technosphere visualises the artificial physical systems built by humanity as a 'sixth sphere' — a new geological stratum beyond the biosphere. Fragmented urban structures, processed by algorithm, multiply and find their own order — readable as a twenty-first-century edition of the grid-city Koolhaas saw 'self-perpetuating beyond its designers' intent' in Delirious New York.
Minhyeok Seo's City'scape + Tied is a situational design that fuses a physical door, a TV screen, and an interactive installation. Across the doubled structure that every Times Square holds at once — the spectacular outward plaza and the quiet inward back-alley — visitors turn away from the bright signage, walk into the alley, and through the simple act of opening a door encounter a private moment inside the everyday city.
Jeanyoon Choi's Banpo-Xism critiques Korea's real-estate value system, reduced to the two-dimensional plane of location (Banpo) and brand (Xi). The artist's invocation of Flatland — and the structure where 'integration' opens that plane back into a differentiable manifold — suggests that the advertising plane of New York Times Square and the apartment-brand plane of Yeongdeungpo Times Square are the same urban surface carved by different algorithms.
Intae Hwang's Vessel translates a year of Seoul's mobility data into geometric form, then synchronises a visitor's pulse with that 'beat of the city' through a sensor. The proposition of city-as-organism — what Delirious New York once called 'the culture of congestion,' the throb of a human crowd — moves here into a twenty-first-century form: data joined to a biometric signal. Minhyeok Seo's Post-Vanishing imagines the next scene of that pulsing city, after humans, as three living forms standing for matter, connection, and surface.
Why the comparison
What made New York Times Square the crystallisation of the urban advertising surface was twentieth-century media. What lets Yeongdeungpo Times Square continue that crystallisation is twenty-first-century media — data, sensors, generative AI, algorithm. Living Geometry 2026 asks, on top of that shift, what geometry the city is alive in. Recommended for visitors interested in media art, urban theory, and Anthropocene discourse.
Transit :: 3-min walk from Yeongdeungpo Station (Line 1 / KTX)
Curation & development :: KAIST Experience Design Lab (XD Lab)
Suggested duration :: ~60–90 min
About the exhibition
Living Geometry 2026 is a media-art special exhibition curated and developed by the KAIST Experience Design Lab (XD Lab) within KAIST's Department of Industrial Design. It re-threads Yeongdeungpo's visible urban landscape, its invisible data, and the emotional strata behind them in a geometric language — recasting the city, beyond a stilled aggregate of concrete, as an organism in continual pulse. Seven works span single-channel video, interactive installation, and multi-device web art.
Title :: Living Geometry 2026 · 생동 기하학 (Living Geometry)
Dates :: May 1 – Jun 28, 2026
Hours :: Daily 10:00–18:00 (last entry 17:45)
Venue :: YDP Artsquare · Times Square B2F, 15 Yeongjung-ro, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul
