Usually when an old district is preserved, we read it as someone’s will. Roma is different. What saved this district was not will but accident, and regulation.
Unable to build
After the 1985 quake, rules came in limiting the construction of new apartment buildings and the adaptation of older ones Fact. And this regulation had an unexpected result — the surviving historic buildings were not redeveloped but preserved as they were Fact. Once towers could not go up on the fallen sites, the façades of Ep.3 stayed, bound in time Estimate.
An accidental museum
As a result Roma became an accidental museum of modern architecture. With regulation blocking redevelopment, rents stayed low and the beautiful architecture remained Fact. Those two conditions — cheap rent and good buildings — combined to draw artists and founders from the 2000s (Ep.8) Estimate. Where the reuse of Dadaocheng and Incheon came through policy and enterprise, Roma’s revival began as a side effect of regulation.
The durability solidarity left
One fact must be held alongside this layer. In the 2017 earthquake, the buildings rebuilt in Roma in 1985 held Fact. The reason was that residents had properly supervised the reconstruction Fact. The civic solidarity of Ep.4 did not remain only sentimental memory but carried into the durability of the buildings themselves Estimate.
And the paradox completes
Here the through-line of this series completes. The quake brought the district down; that collapse produced regulation; that regulation preserved the architecture; that preservation summoned the revival Estimate. And that revival is now creating a new crisis — which is the subject of Ep.9.