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
In the presence of Park Seo-Bo (Yecheon, 1931) – a leading figure of South Korean contemporary art, father of the Dansaekhwa movement of minimalist monochrome painting – the first stone has been laid for the museum that will be home to his legacy, fo
The flood-resistant Oceanix Busan prototype was unveiled on 26 April 2022 in New York – at the second United Nations roundtable on Sustainable Floating Cities – as a follow-up to the Oceanix City concept presented in April 2019. A fruit of collaborat
The client’s vision was interpreted as a wish to make a school of joy, discovery, safety, and belonging; to make a community, a home where all social and academic skills are learned; to make a place, which would act as a center for surrounding commun
This hub is located on a small vacant corner plot. The bloody demonstrations that brought democracy to Korea in 1980 had been forged in a now non-existent bookshop on the same corner, and this fact inspired the idea of building a simple manifesto of
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
Founded in the 1970s, the Galleria is Korea’s first and largest upscale department store franchise, and has remained at the forefront of the premium retail market in the country since then. Located at the center of this young urban development surrou
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
Consisting of two buildings, one harboring a nightclub and the other an indoor theme park, the project is part of a whole leisure complex next to the country’s main airport.
Nestled in the dense woodlands of Gyeongsang Province, this refined complex of sculpture-like constructions explores the close relationship between architecture and landscape.
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
The stratified facade of these homes is achieved thanks to a set of variations in the elaboration of concrete, adjusting the water-cement ratio, the amount of pigment, and the aggregates to achieve a variety of shapes, textures, and colors... [+]
The enclosure is a curved and floating masonry on a concrete structure. The curved forms at the entrances and where the vertical and horizonal planes meet aim to merge the volume into the site, creating a transition between the open space and the pro
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...
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
For a city planned ex novo as a paradigm of radical speculation, the firm AZPML has won the competition for the Korean Museum of Urbanism and Architecture (KMUA). Its scheme seeks to rethink the role of the discipline in this day and age, in the proc
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
On view from 19 July to 3 August at Palbok Art Factory, a cultural center in the South Korean city of Jeonju, is an exhibition on the work of the Spanish photographer Manuel Álvarez Diestro. ‘Boxification,’ a series of images shot in industrial ports
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
‘Slow Talk’, the first individual exhibition in Spain devoted to Bohnchang Koo, includes 28 images from the artist’s most representative series, using white as predominant color, and always centered on one theme: the relentless passage of time. Koo w
Gorka Blas ha ganado el concurso internacional para la construcción de una biblioteca pública en la ciudad surcoreana de Daego. Su propuesta —que resultó la vencedora entre las 548 presentadas por equipos de 61 países— se inspira en el carácter del
El estudio Snøhetta ha sido seleccionado para construir la Ópera de Busan —la segunda ciudad surcoreana más poblada tras la capital, Seúl—, imponiéndose a las propuestas de los otros nueve finalistas, entre los que se encontraban Norman Foster, Zaha
Located on an island off the city of Incho, 65 kilometers from Seoul, New Songdo is the world's first city to be built according to smart city criteria. Covering an area of just over 6 square kilometers, the new city - whose construction, begun in 20
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
En la turística isla surcoreana de Jeoju, Shigeru Ban y Kyeong Sik Yoon han construido el club social del campo de golf Haesley Nine Bridges de 16.000 metros cuadrados (véase Arquitectura Viva 137). El programa se divide en dos ámbitos formal y mater
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
Concept-designed between 1993 and 1995, these landmark buildings share a preference for almond shapes and tapered volumes, and a simplistic belief in the ability of the curve to call attention and raise the symbolic profile of a structure. In the Val
