The Audeum (Audio Museum) is located in Seoul’s Gangnam district. The exterior skin presents hanging aluminum louvers that overlap vertically to create a play of changing shadows. The random and sculptural cascade arrangement makes it possible to em
The Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron has won the competition for the building that will safeguard the archives of three major cultural institutions based in the South Korean capital: the Seoul Museum of Art, the Seoul Museum of Craft Art, and the Se
OMA / Chris van Duijn has won the competition to design a new campus for Hongik University in Seoul, carrying the day over SANAA, Herzog & de Meuron, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, and David Chipperfield Architects. Built in the 1950s on the slop
On a busy thoroughfare in the heart of Gangnam District, a hermetic-looking triangular prism contains eleven floors of office spaces and the headquarters of a cultural foundation. The concrete used on the facade has an organic texture achieved throug
Evoking the traditional roofs of Hanok and surrounded by a garden with architectural fragments and vegetation, the museum reuses parts of obsolete railway infrastructures to reduce the impact of the construction on the environment... The winning desi
Located north of Seoul, the project for a startup center is part of an urban regeneration plan that aims to transform this region into an economic and culture hub. The architecture defines a framework that supports and serves the different programs
The Istanbul firm MAA, headed by the architect Melike Altinisik, has unveiled its competition-winning design for the Robot Science Museum in the Chang-dong neighborhood of the South Korean capital. Saving time and money, robots will build the curvin
Designed by the firm stpmj, founded by Seung Teak Lee and Mi Jung Lim and working from offices in New York and Seoul, this vertical house rises on a small plot of land in the densely populated South Korean capital. The program stacks different zones
The new headquarters for Amorepacific, Korea’s largest beauty company, is located in the center of Seoul, on a site which has been occupied by the firm since 1956. The site is situated next to a former US military zone that is being transformed into
Located close to the old south gate into the city of Seoul, the Namdeamun Market is the largest in South Korea and also the oldest, dating back to the 15th century. In the past decades it has become an important commercial destination and a popular t
The tourist center contains a retail complex of 3,600 m² and a night club of 6,200 m², housed inside two pieces of concrete whose design addresses the forms of the surrounding buildings, turning their facades into echoes of the environment... [+]
The French firm Dominique Perrault Architecture, in collaboration with the South Korean office Junglim, has won the international competition for the construction of ‘Light Walk,’ the future intermodal transport hub and shopping center in Seoul’s Gan
Located in the very heart of Seoul, an overpass for vehicles, 16 meters high at its highest and built with steel and reinforced concrete, has been transformed into a huge elevated walkway almost a kilometer long that is part of an ambitious project t
A light and seemingly infinite brass structure that defragments vertically colonizes the whole building. The project references the lantern concept and its symbolism – light in the dark showing the way – to connect with Asian traditions...
A stainless steel mesh veil envelops the rigid geometry of a white cube located in Seoul’s historic fabric. It blurs the actual and real mass of the geometrical art gallery playing with the shadows, the light reflections and the moiré effect...
Since its construction in the 1970s, the overpass by Seoul’s Central Station connected Namdaemun market with the area located east of the train tracks until safety inspections in 2006 deemed the structure unsafe and intended to demolish and rebuild i
Since its construction in the 1970s, the overpass by Seoul’s Central Station connected Namdaemun market with the area located east of the train tracks until safety inspections in 2006 deemed the structure unsafe and intended to demolish and rebuild i
The brief called for the renovation of Chungha Building in Seoul’s Gangnam neighborhood – world famous after the success of the hit ‘Gangnam Style.’ Even though the building was completed not so long ago, it was already outdated in a street dominated
In order to transform the obsolete elevated highway into a new public space, the viaduct’s sections are divided into different stations fit out for different uses and surrounded by vegetation that spreads over the adjacent urban fabric...
Located in the gardens of Gyeonghuigung Palace in the Korean capital, the Prada Transformer pavilion was conceived as a lightweight and adaptable piece that could accommodate a broad range of fashion, art and movie events during 2009, and whose image
Defined by its location on the side of a hill and close to the entrance to the university, the building’s form was conceived as a basic rectangular box, with a diagonal cut that adjusts to the incline of the hill. The form is then raised over a centr
A huge cultural complex in Seoul, the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, is the first public building in Korea ever to be designed with the help of BIM (Building Information Modeling, see Arquitectura Viva 158). Through this system, the project’s highly comple
A vast project of 243 hectares resorts to the concept of healing as a strategy in nature (creating a lake), to history (caring for the existing), and to culture (removing the military area). The park is directly related with the city through a series
The Centre Georges Pompidou will be opening a museum in Seoul in 2025, expanding its network of outposts that currently includes branches in Metz, Shanghai, and Málaga. The Paris-based institution has signed an agreement with the Hanwha Culture Found
During the opening of the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2021 that took place September 16th, its General Director, Dominique Perrault, shared his experience and thoughts on the future of this kind of events. Tribulations of a Biennale d
The Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism will be held from September 16 to October 31, 2021. Dominique Perrault is the General Director of the Seoul Biennale. The third edition of this Biennale, entitled "CROSSROADS Building the Resilient City
A series of stepped glass volumes form the roof of Louis Vuitton’s new flagship store in Seoul, designed by Frank Gehry as a miniature take on his Fondation Louis Vuitton. According to the architect, the stacked design is inspired by both the Paris m
The paranoia that the digital revolution has begun to spark has its counterpoint in the blind optimism that associates good with progress and progress with the machine. Expressions of this optimism are competitions like the one held for the design of
Sometimes described as monotonous, the austere and elegant architecture of the British David Chipperfield invariably demonstrates a surprising capacity to adapt to very diverse contexts, from hypercivilized Berlin to the emerging globalized cities of
The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy says that an infrastructure is an underground work. If this is so, then the future multimodal transport hub and shopping center of Gangnam, right in the heart of Seoul and called Lightwalk, is literally one
Dos torres residenciales —una de 260 metros de altura y 54 plantas, y otra que se eleva hasta los 300 metros con 60 niveles—, unidas en su parte central por un volumen que evoca una nube caótica y pixelada: así es el proyecto de los holandeses MVRDV
El pabellón Transformer diseñado por OMA para la firma de moda italiana Prada son cuatro edificios contenidos en una única estructura; sus cuatro caras, de geometrías diversas —un cuadrado, un hexágono, un círculo y una cruz—, permitirán otros tantos
Los holandeses MVRDV han proyectado una ‘ciudad’ vertical a 35 kilómetros al sur de Seúl, llamada Power Center Gwang Gyo. Este nodo urbano compuesto por nueve torres de distintos tamaños, que van creciendo en forma de anillos, se asienta sobre un pli
