So you want a new landmark for your city …
Well, there’s one tried and tested structure
that has turned heads everywhere from London to Singapore: the Ferris wheel.
Ok, ok but maybe you want something that stands out a bit more. Well,
how about you take that wheel and remove the spokes?
Still not cool enough? Ok, how about you build two wheels and twist them together?
That sounds a bit nuts right? Well,
that’s what’s just been announced in the South Korean capital of Seoul.
This is the Seoul Twin Eye, a 180 metre diameter double helix spokeless Ferris wheel,
announced by the Seoul Metropolitan Government back in January.
City landmarks come in all shapes and sizes, but this one is not like anything we’ve ever
seen before and it has some insane engineering that we can’t wait to get to the bottom of.
But there’s more to its design than meets the
eye. Its unique shape is not just engineers showing off.
In fact there’s a good reason why it looks like this and not like this…
… and there’s a very good reason it looks absolutely nothing like this.
This is a quite unbelievable story that includes a 17th century clock,
the 2002 world cup and a lawsuit with one of Korea’s most famous architects.
Close your eyes and think of Paris. What comes to mind? Chances are,
you thought of the Eiffel Tower.
This time, let’s try Sydney. I’ll bet you another
shrimp on the barbie that the Sydney Opera House popped into your head.
OK now, close your eyes and think of Seoul…
Anything? Don’t get us wrong, we love
Korea, it’s got a strong economy, great food and brilliant films – although, shame about the music.
But for all its cultural clout, its capital city is lacking the kind of
iconic landmark that secures it a place in the big league.
That’s what’s behind the decision to build the Seoul Twin Eye,
but there’s another part of this story which,
unless you’ve got a keen eye for architectural controversies, you might have missed…
But before we get to that… this is a construction channel first and foremost so… how on earth do
you build a spokeless Ferris wheel? Good news: we asked someone who designs them.
Conventional Ferris wheel … works as a bicycle wheel, where the other one is more,
related to the amusement park rides where the cabins go around the fixed structure
So what you have is in the middle you have a fixed ring. Then the fixed ring is connected
to the foundation. So that is your fixed structure. And then the around the fixed
structure you have a rotating ring which is a daisy chain. In other words, the daisy chain is
made of number of bogies that are connected into into a chain. So it's all interlinked.
The gondolas on a spokeless wheel sit on wheel sets, which are all linked together,
similar to a train. These are independently powered and collectively drive the chain,
but the wheel they sit on remains still – this design is about evolution, not revolution.
The first spokeless wheel opened in Tokyo back in 2003 but they’re
still pretty rare. Still though, that’s not stopped designers from pushing the limits.
In 2017, the title of the world’s tallest,
spokeless Ferris wheel was handed to this structure in China. At 145 metres it’s
almost three times the size of Tokyo’s Big O and comfortably taller than the London Eye.
It was built to give the city of Weifang an iconic landmark,
which brings us full circle back to Seoul.
To pick a world class design for the new landmark, an international competition was launched,
attracting submissions from 181 teams, only this isn’t what gave us the Twin Eye,
this actually happened way back in the year 1999.
With the new millennium just around the corner and South Korea acting as joint host of the 2002
FIFA World Cup, the Korean government launched a competition to create a new symbol for the nation.
The winning entry was this, the Seoul Ring,
from the relatively unknown team of architect Lee Eunseok and the studio O’pus Architects.
They put forward a truly breathtaking monument to the new millennium. An enormous freestanding
circle standing at one end of Nanjido Peace Park, the centrepiece of the 2002 World Cup in Seoul.
It would have been the first building of its type in the world and at 200 metres high,
taller than anything similar today.
The Seoul Ring, contained an observation deck at the top and, crucially, featured
gondolas on its inside, creating what would be the world’s first spokeless Ferris wheel.
But shortly after it was announced as the winner in 2000,
questions began to be asked about the feasibility of its design.
A spokeless wheel faces a lot of engineering challenges but one of the biggest is caused by
the stress placed on the overall structure by the way pods are linked together.
So the main problem, gravity load problem, with the fixed frames is it's how the fixed
frame ovalises So if you have a daisy chain on your arm, basically what you
have is much of the load sitting on the arm and then the daisy chain hanging underneath
your arm. So it's exactly the same principle on the fixed frame wheels. You have a fixed frame,
which is the your fixed structure supporting a ring of daisy chains which means that the
the majority of the load, the gravity load sits on top of the fixed frame,
and then from the fixed frame, you need to move that load down into foundation
A common way this is fixed is by building a support to reinforce the
middle of the wheel. This effectively makes the structure work like an arch,
which is capable of bearing the weight of the pods without becoming deformed.
This and other problems on the Seoul Ring were eventually solved, but not before the
budget for the project had nearly doubled. Citing cost overruns and public opinion,
the minister in charge, Kim Han-gil, scrapped the project in March 2001.
But how do we get from there to the world’s first double helix wheel?
Well, fast forward to 2023, the local Seoul government announced plans to build a new city
landmark and revealed this, the Seoul Ring Zero, which bears more than just a passing resemblance
to the Seoul Ring and was even planned for a site a kilometre away from the original…
This is where things start to spin out of control so let’s try and do this as simply as possible.
It took the South Korean government nine years and a lawsuit to pay the architects
for their work on the cancelled 2001 wheel. Since then one of its designers, Lee Eunseok,
has risen to industry fame and never let go of his dream of building the Seoul Ring.
So when the government announced Seoul Ring Zero in March 2023 … the row over
the original design was reignited. Within a week, the Korea Architects
Institute released a statement accusing the Seoul government of plagiarism.
The government rejected this, saying many designs were looked at for inspiration,
and that the basic shape was in the public domain. Cue months of very public back and forth between
the original designers and the mayor of Seoul. At one point the mayor claimed to have invited
the designers to work on the Seoul Ring Zero, but this claim is disputed by Lee and O’pus.
Meanwhile, Lee was still fighting to complete his original design of the
Seoul Ring, but to no avail. Somewhere in late 2023 the
Seoul Ring Zero design was dropped. And then… in December 2023, the government
announced the Seoul Twin Eye – which it would build with another architecture firm, UNStudio.
Which brings us to today, at the third iteration of Seoul’s dramatic quest to build a giant wheel.
We reached out to Lee Eunsok for comment. He told us that on hearing Mayor Oh’s intention
to build a new wheel for Seoul he visited the chief architect of the Seoul government
and proposed his original design. He was promised this proposal would be presented
to Mayor Oh but didn’t hear anything until the SeoulRing Zero was announced.
He added: “This issue could be viewed by the international architectural community
as a significant plagiarism case initiated by a public institution. I firmly believe that
respecting intellectual property rights and giving proper attribution are crucial for upholding the
integrity and reputation of all parties involved in the architectural and creative fields.”
In response, the Seoul Metropolitan Government told us that their plans to build a new landmark
date back to August 2022 and Mayor Oh had proposed the idea of a spokeless wheel.
They say they considered many existing wheels like the Tokyo Big O and acknowledged
consulting with Lee over his Millenium Gate design as part of the development process.
They reject the accusation of plagiarism, stating that the Seoul Ring Zero was “created
as an example to provide a general direction for the Seoul Ring, whose
specific form will be determined through … proposals in the future”
While this may seem implausible, it’s not the first time a wheel designer has been accused
of plagiarism, in fact it’s an accusation that ‘s been flying around since they were first invented.
The original Ferris wheel was built in Chicago in 1893 by engineer George Washington Ferris.
But shortly after his ride opened he was sued by William Somers who claimed
Ferris had copied his patented “Observation Roundabout” which he built the year before.
Ferris’ case wasn’t helped when he admitted to having come up
with the idea when actually riding Somer’s wheel.
Somers won the lawsuit, it was Ferris’ name that stuck and the rest is history.
But what about that 17th century clock I mentioned?
When the Twin Eye was announced a press release revealed the inspiration for
the new landmark came from this, an antique Korean astrological clock dating from 1669,
featuring spinning rings which do clearly resemble the Twin Eye.
No acknowledgement was made however of the previous designs,
but maybe the radical redesign may contain a nod to the inspiration behind the inspiration.
Development work on the Twin Eye is ongoing, so there may be a few more twists in this
tale before anything gets built. Seoul may be a city in search of a landmark,
but for now it may have to settle for a monumental row.
Don’t forget that we’re inspiring the next generation of builders through our
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