Yongin City to Build 'Comprehensive Environmental Education Center' Above Pogok Respía in Pogok-eup

[Suwon Ilbo=Park No-hun Reporter] Yongin Special City held the final report meeting for ‘Basic Concept for Creation and Operation of Comprehensive Environmental Education Center’ at the Yongin City Council Chamber on the 10th.

According to Yongin City on the 11th, the project was conducted to establish the direction for construction and operation of the ‘Yongin Comprehensive Environmental Education Center’ to be built above Pogok Respía in Uyun-ri, Pogok-eup, Choin-gu, and to establish a broad framework for center space composition and educational program operation.

The Korea Environmental Education Research Institute, which conducted the project, analyzed the center's location and city characteristics to present the construction direction, differentiation strategy, and space composition plan of the Comprehensive Environmental Education Center, and presented necessary programs and capacity based on environmental education target analysis.

First, the Comprehensive Environmental Education Center will be built as an eco-friendly structure so that the facility itself can serve as learning material for carbon-neutral education, and will be constructed in a direction that allows various citizens to use it together by creating outdoor landscaping and experiential and play spaces utilizing water.

In particular, considering the fact that the Comprehensive Environmental Education Center will be built above Respía and regional linkage with the nearby Gyeongan Stream, plans are being made to enable multilayered environmental education by linking with forest education centers and rural theme parks to provide water resource utilization and biodiversity education.

Additionally, the concept is to establish a dense environmental education network befitting the status of a Special City and create it as a hub for environmental education.

Through this, it will be operated to enable various stakeholders to mutually exchange and create new values through an active and creative social process.

The Yongin Comprehensive Environmental Education Center was selected in the 2022 Han River Basin Environmental Office Special Support Project for Residents, securing 6.9 billion won in project funding, with a total of 13.9 billion won to be invested.

With a total floor area of approximately 3,000 square meters and three aboveground floors, it will be equipped with educational spaces including environmental education rooms, planning exhibition halls, permanent exhibition halls, and ecological experience rooms, and is expected to provide extensive environmental environmental education to approximately 50,000 citizens annually.

Design competitions for the center's construction will be conducted in November, with construction to commence in March 2024, completion targeted for December 2025, and opening scheduled for March 2026.

Meanwhile, 20 people including city council members, related government officials, Yongin Office of Education, and environmental organizations participated in the final report meeting.

A city official stated, “With this basic concept project, we have taken the first step in creating an ‘integrated one-stop environmental education center,’” and added, “Since private, public, government, and academic sectors have discussed sufficiently about the construction and operation direction of the Yongin Comprehensive Environmental Education Center, we will ensure that the discussion contents are actively reflected in future architectural design.”