Pankyo Valley, South Korea
2011

Our architect-developer team won a competition to build this 10-story office building in a new, high-tech business district in Seoul, Korea. The site is a newly planned area, so the future context is unknown. The design is the result of a strict zoning mass, where the articulation of the envelope generates the building’s expression. The east facade adjoins a public promenade. An urban amphitheater draws the public into the building, which is inflected to create the amphitheater space. This east facade becomes a sleek, seamless glass curtain wall, a display with embedded LED video display oriented toward this public side, as if a virtual space were opened in the facade. By contrast the north and south facades express the actual, inhabited space inside. This space is bounded by construction technology that has not changed much in 80 years, concrete floor slabs. Here the articulation is in the modulation of the depth of the facade glazing, the location of the panels in space. Balconies, formed where the glass is recessed, bring building inhabitants to the facade. Here the building displays its occupation while the occupants may experience fresh air and views.