Seonyudo Park

Character

Seonyudo Park keeps the machinery of a water-treatment plant visible inside an ecological park: settling basins became gardens, filter beds hold aquatic plants, and concrete columns now support vegetation instead of the industrial systems they once served

The conversions are unusually literal. Former chemical-settling basins became the Water Purification Garden and the Garden of Time; filter beds became the Aquatic Botanical Garden; the clean-water reservoir became the Garden of Green Columns. Circular sludge-treatment structures survive as outdoor activity and performance spaces. The pleasure is partly in recognizing that the park’s geometry was inherited rather than invented from scratch

Landscape architect Jung Youngsun later recalled that the remaining purification facilities were interesting precisely because Seonyudo’s earlier scenery had already disappeared. Her design approach, developed with architect Cho Seong-ryong’s team after a public competition, treated the surviving concrete as material worth keeping

The experience

Paths move between old basins, planted courts and river-edge viewpoints without hiding the site’s former engineering. In the Garden of Time, vegetation grows through the concrete framework of the treatment plant. Elsewhere, an upper water channel from the old system still carries water toward the aquatic garden

The island setting prevents the industrial remains from feeling like an isolated relic. Seonyugyo Bridge connects the park to the south bank of the Hangang, while Seonyujeong Pavilion and the bridge itself open views toward the river and the city. The preserved plant and the skyline remain in the same field of view

The park is compact enough for the conversion details to stay readable. A basin, wall or column can be encountered first as a garden element and then understood as a piece of the former treatment works

History

Before the industrial period, Seonyubong was known as a scenic point on the Hangang and appeared in older artistic depictions of the river. Quarrying during the Japanese colonial period altered the former peak, and the landscape later became infrastructure

The Seonyu water-purification plant began operating in 1978, supplying tap water to southwestern Seoul. It remained in service until 2000, leaving an island filled with basins, reservoirs, pipes and treatment structures

A design competition launched in 1999 sought a new use for the site. The winning scheme by SeoAhn Total Landscape with Cho Seong-ryong’s architectural team preserved substantial parts of the plant rather than clearing the island and starting again. Seoul opened Seonyudo Park in April 2002 as Korea’s first environmentally regenerated ecological park

That sequence remains visible. The park did not restore the old scenic Seonyubong, and it did not erase the purification plant. It made the industrial layer the structure of the new landscape

Before you go

The outdoor landscape carries most of the visit, while indoor exhibition facilities keep shorter schedules than the park itself. Ordinary visitor parking is outside the island park; only accessible parking is provided inside, and the pedestrian approaches from Seonyudo and Dangsan stations form part of the arrival