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With only one month to go until the 2018 Winter Olympics officially kick off on February 9 in PyeongChang, South Korea, athletic teams from around the world prepare to represent their nations in front of an international audience. Canada isn't limiting itself to sporting competitions alone to... View full entry
At the 2016 Venice Architectural Biennale, Ban and Choi presented a scale model of a 13-kilometer (about eight-mile), garden-lined bamboo walkway meandering between North and South Korea, elevated to protect visitors from ubiquitous DMZ landmines. Along its length would be towers for viewing nature and, every kilometer, open-air “Jung Ja” meditation pavilions designed by different architects and artists, including several reserved for North Koreans. — Los Angeles Times
With support from Shigeru Ban and others, artist Jae-Eun Choi envisioned a garden-lined bridge called "Dreaming of Earth" that would meander through the Korean Demilitarized Zone, which has ironically grown into one of Asia's most significant wildlife sanctuaries. The initial proposal, which Choi... View full entry
Excitement is building for the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics and some of that excitement is for an actual building. Hosted in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the ceremonies kicking off on February 9th will include the unveiling of a colorless building, designed by the British architect, Asif Khan. To... 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
Over the past decade of South Korea's rapid urbanization high-density apartment development has become the most popular type of housing in the country, producing a myriad of identical, close-set, utilitarian blocks. When in 2012 the Hyundai Development Company invited UNStudio to design an... 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
The aim of bringing in Foster’s brand of highly engineered minimalism is to help attract the industry’s “top talent and provide an inspirational place to work”.
The development contains “light filled offices, advanced laboratories and dynamic social spaces to nurture a culture of openness and innovation”.
Located in the heart of Asia’s “Silicon Valley”, the centrepiece of the facility are the tire testing and research laboratories, which are on display to invited visitors and staff.
— globalconstructionreview.com
More Foster + Partners:Norman Foster reimagines global infrastructure strategies in new essayFoster + Partners begins construction of "floating" Copenhagen office buildingConstruction begins on major Foster + Partners project in SwedenApple's spaceship campus, by the numbers (including an... 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
The site is located in Kaesong, the old imperial capital of medieval Korea, now a small industrial city located in North Korea, just north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). [...]
“There were wars of nerves between South and North scholars due to differences in methodologies, but we were in a same boat on the achievement of this excavation.”
— qz.com
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
“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
Jang Won Choi, Kyung Min Kwon, and Cheon Kang Park of collaborative team MOON JI BANG recently won the inaugural Young Architects Program Seoul in South Korea with their proposal, "Shinseon Play". The proposal draws inspiration from traditional Korean mythology with features like gently swaying "clouds", a trampoline, and a grassy meadow -- making it an ideal outdoor installation for the summer season. — bustler.net
Find out more on Bustler. View full entry
In the Korean Peninsula's response to the 2014 Venice Biennale theme of rediscovering national identity through architecture, the "Crow's Eye View" pavilion explores the divided state of North and South Korea, and extends that discussion to the global state of architecture itself. The multi-themed pavilion uses architecture as a key to discovering new narratives of the peninsula's complex past, present, and future in an architectural and social perspective. — bustler.net
Find details of the pavilion on Bustler.Related: A rare look at North Korean architecture, brought to you by non-Koreans View full entry
The Korea pavilion has been a part of the Venice Architecture Biennale since 1993, when the optimism of the post-Berlin Wall era made reunification between North and South Korea seem plausible. But getting equal representation from both Northern and Southern architects in 2014 has proved nearly... View full entry
