According to the authors, each city's various subway structures and railway
systems should reflect somehow the character of that city. In an effort to
infuse the city's identity into its subway map, while also trying to
simplify and beautify the original diagram, Kim Ji-Hwan and Jin Sol produced
a series of original maps for three city subway systems - the Seoul Railway,
Tokyo Railway and Osaka Railway. More cities are in the design phase and
others are being planned.The first image depicts Tokyo's intricate
network of subway, lightrail and monorail, with more than 1500 stations
covering the metropolitan area. Placed in the city center is the Imperial
Palace, the residence of the current Ten-no (Japanese Emperor). Subway lines
circumvent the expansive ground claimed by the Imperial Palace. This
characteristic is visualized in this map by the concentric circles spreading
out to the entire city, with the center in the Imperial Palace ground. This
strong representation of circles is reminiscent of the national flag of
Japan and the Japanese identity expressed in the flag.
The second
represents Seoul's network. The city boasts 600 years of history as the
capital of the South Korea and its crossed by a river of great magnitude,
which has become one of its most important symbols, the Han Gang. The
depiction of Han River in this map mimics the curvature in the middle of the
Tae-Geuk mark of the national flag of Korea. The overall circular shape of
the map was also inspired by the Tae-Geuk mark. The brighter area in the
center of the map shows the territory of Han Yang, the old capital of
Cho-Sun Dynasty. This was the old Seoul marked by the Four Gates, and the
growth of the city becomes clear when compared to the modern metropolitan
sprawl.
