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A new home for South Korea’s energy giant ST International is nearing completion in Seoul, adding to the city’s reputation as an emerging art capital. The combination museum and corporate headquarters heralds a new vogue museum building in pronounced geometric form. Herzog & de Meuron are... View full entry
Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) recently completes the Bundang Doosan Tower in Jung District of central Seoul. With its stacked, interconnected masses, and glass facade what makes this tower so interesting is the 100-meter tall sky bridge connecting the two towers. Designed for the Doosan... View full entry
Which is the world's most vertical city?
You might think of Hong Kong, given its famous skyscraper skyline, but by different measures of verticality other cities come out on top
— The Guardian
"According to building data research company Emporis," writes Matthew Keegan for the Guardian Cities series, "Seoul in South Korea has more high-rise buildings, with 16,359. Emporis defines a high-rise as a building at least 35m, or 12 storeys tall. In second place is Moscow, Russia, with... View full entry
Turkish based architecture studio Melike Altinisik Architects (MAA) wins the first ever international design competition hosted by The Seoul Metropolitan Government. The first competition of its kind, applicants were asked to submit a design idea to pioneer the world's first robot science museum... View full entry
MVRDV has recently completed The Imprint, a new 2-building art and entertainment complex next to Seoul’s Incheon Airport. Featuring a nightclub in one building and indoor theme park in the other, the windowless structures are part of the larger Paradise City complex of 6 buildings next to South... View full entry
Eunpyeong Hanok Village was selling locals hanok, the traditional Korean tile-roofed residences that have, after hundreds of years, increasingly been destroyed and replaced by towering steel structures; indeed, not since the 1930s have hanok been constructed in significant numbers.
The decline of vernacular architecture in the face of global urbanization is, of course, hardly new, though traditional Korean hanok are a particularly stark contrast to modern city living.
— The New York Times
A new housing development, Eunpyeong, in northern Seoul is solely dedicated to constructing traditional Korean hanok houses. The design adheres to certain guidelines on proportion and design, with a low center of gravity, a courtyard, and an orientation towards nature. The hanok's popularity... View full entry
Morphosis recently announced the opening of a new flagship research and design facility for The Kolon Group, a leading manufacturing company based in South Korea. The 820,000-square-foot facility is located in Magok, an emerging tech hub in Seoul. Kolon Group facility by Morphosis, located... View full entry
From Zaha Hadid’s bulbous plaza to a ‘library’ of flora planted across a skygarden, the South Korean capital is using its architecture festival to look to the future – and atone for the costly sins of the past — The Guardian
The Guardian architecture critic Oliver Wainwright is in South Korea's capital reporting from the inaugural Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. "There are over 200 biennales already, so we had to do something different," he quotes the event's curator Hyungmin Pai. "We see it as a kind of... View full entry
Ever since the High Line appeared above the streets of Chelsea in New York, cities across the globe have been working on creating their own variations of the civic project. In London, this iteration was to be the Thomas Heatherwick designed Garden Bridge. However, the project was marred by... View full entry
Located in Seoul, the Lotte World Tower, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, has become the world’s fifth tallest tower, in the process knocking 1WTC—the tallest U.S. American building—out of the top five. At 555 meters tall, the Lotte World Tower has also surpassed Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Twin... View full entry
LDF aims to grow the Lotte Duty Free Shop World Tower into the world’s No.1 duty-free shopping destination.
[...] Lotte is poised to turn the Lotte World Tower into a tourist attraction that can compare well with Dubai’s Burj Khalifa and Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands
On top of that, the company plans to make the Lotte World Tower the largest tourism hub in Gangnam by equipping it with the world's highest observatory (located on the 123rd floor (555 meters high) [...].
— koreaittimes.com
Related in the Archinect News:Seoul's Lotte World Tower complex passes safety inspections, allowed to reopenConstruction in Seoul’s supertall Lotte World Tower surpasses 100th story – amid safety concernsMysterious Sinkholes Appear Near Construction Site of Supertall Skyscraper in Seoul View full entry
Lotte World Mall has finally received approval by the Seoul city government to open up its aquarium and movie theater, five months after the facilities were shut down due to safety concerns. [...]
Lotte World Mall has been embroiled in several safety issues since it opened its doors in October. Several construction workers fell to their deaths during the construction of the annexed skyscraper [...].
— Korea JoongAng Daily
Previously:Construction in Seoul’s supertall Lotte World Tower surpasses 100th story – amid safety concernsMysterious Sinkholes Appear Near Construction Site of Supertall Skyscraper in Seoul View full entry
With the completion of the 100th floor, Lotte Group invited a group of reporters on Thursday to take a peek at the Lotte World Tower, still under-construction, in Jamsil, southern Seoul. The building is currently the tallest building in Korea. [...]
While the view is awe-inspiring, the fate of the Lotte World Tower hangs in balance, especially after the 2014 Sewol disaster which resulted in more than 300 people dead.
— Korea JoongAng Daily
Previously: Mysterious Sinkholes Appear Near Construction Site of Supertall Skyscraper in Seoul View full entry
“The first thing is to find the identity of Seoul,” he says. “Seoul was created very differently from western cities, with special theories of feng shui and Confucianism, and we kept that for 600 years. We didn’t change anything – even under Japanese colonialism, that was kept. But since the 1960s, under American influence, it has changed very much.”
If Seung has his way, the days of skyscrapers springing up in central Seoul would come to an end.
— ft.com
For the developers of the world's sixth tallest building near Seoul, a mysteriously shrinking lake and the appearance of small sinkholes in residential neighborhoods couldn't have come at a more inopportune time [...]
With about 70 of its 123 floors completed, the Lotte World Tower is now undergoing a review by experts and has put on hold the opening of adjacent low-rise buildings that form part of its complex.
— Associated Press
