Hasta La Ideas

New York studio Asymptote has designed a faceted performing arts centre for South Korea that references the curved rooftops of ancient Buddhist temples and pavilions (+ slideshow).

Proposed for a site that connects the city of Sejong with a park and river, the Sejong Center for Performing Arts is designed by Asymptote as an asymmetric building accommodating a grand auditorium, a small theatre and a cinema.

The architects combined a series of flat and curved surfaces to generate the multi-faceted form of the building, intended to relate to various Korean architectural styles.

“By confronting different aspects of the site the architecture sets out to capture the city’s vitality and history, by alluding tectonically to the spirit and flavours of local Korean architectural traditions,” said the architects. “The curved and mathematically precise roofs of nearby pavilions and temples are quoted here and set against the stoic solidity of traditional monumental buildings.”

Some of the exterior walls will integrate outdoor cinema screens, while a glass facade will function as a huge shop window to present some of the theatrical activities taking place inside.

Entrances are to be positioned on the east and west elevations, creating a lobby that cuts through the centre of the structure. This axis will lead directly to cafes, ticket desks and waiting areas.

Asymptote is led by architects Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture. Past projects by the firm include a hotel that straddles a race track in Abu Dhabi. See more architecture by Asymptote »

Here’s more information from the architects:

Sejong Center for Performing Arts

Asymptote’s design for a new centre of performing arts for the city of Sejong in South Korea celebrates the city’s emergence and growth as a place of stature and culture. The proposal calls for an architecture centred around notions of contemporary urbanism as expressed through a distinctive and unique envelope and object-bulling perched on an open site that connects the city, a park and nearby waterway. By confronting different aspects of the site the architecture sets out to capture the city’s vitality and history by alluding tectonically to the spirit and flavours of local Korean architectural traditions. The curved and mathematically precise roofs of nearby pavilions and temples are quoted here and set against the stoic solidity of traditional monumental buildings also part of the surroundings.

The new Sejong arts centre is designed to seamlessly connect to the city fabric where the two main entrances to the building are placed along an east-west axis that cuts diagonally across the site. As this axis passes through the building’s interior it connects the upper foyer of the arts centre with the city centre to the west and the riverside park and museum district to the east. The treatment of the main urban facade as a large multi-story glass expanse creates a theatrical display and show window into the world of performance and theatre. With its intricate patterns of louvres the facade performs environmentally as well as aesthetically providing a compelling and dramatic backdrop to the exterior public space that it overlooks.

The interiors are designed to make for a theatrical setting for the audiences gathering and using the buildings spaces. Two theatres and nested into the buildings interior as well as cafes, reception and waiting areas cinemas and other functions. The notion of bundling and ‘packing’ the buildings function into a singular experience and form allows for both utility and a powerful and ‘episodic’ interiority and experience. The New Sejong Performing Art Center is a centrepiece for the city, a gathering place of history, contemporary culture, performance and spectacle.

Date: 2013
Size: 15,000 sqm
Location: Sejong, South Korea
Architect: Asymptote Architecture
Design Partners: Hani Rashid, Lise Anne Couture
Project Director: John Guida
Design Team: Danny Abalos, Bika Rebek, Du Ho Choi, Hong Min Kim, Project Team” Matthew Slattery, Valentina Soana, Mu Jung Kang,
Client: Multifunctional Administrative City Construction Agency (MACCA) Local Architect: EGA Seoul Structural Engineer: Knippers Helbig Stuttgart- New York
Environmental Design: Transsolar Inc. New York

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by Asymptote appeared first on Dezeen.

This apartment block in Seoul by South Korean designers OBBA has a semi-outdoor stairwell screened behind a section of open brickwork in the centre.

The Beyond the Screen project by OBBA (Office for Beyond Boundaries Architecture) is located on a corner plot in the Naebalsan-dong neighbourhood of Seoul.

The five-storey building comprises two volumes bridged by the stairwell, and its volume is sliced externally by regulations such as setback lines and natural light requirements.

“The outer appearance is a single mass, however, it is actually two masses bridged by a semi-exterior central stairwell with a unique brick screen to the front and back, forming an H-shaped plan,” said the architects.

The upper four floors are divided into 14 residential units in four types, arranged on split levels so that each apartment is accessed directly from a stair landing.

The brick screen allows each apartment to have natural ventilation on three sides.

The pattern continues over the roof and covers selected apartment windows that would otherwise be severely overlooked by adjacent buildings.

“This screen filters the view into the building from the front, while allowing for the right amount of natural light and ventilation, creating a far more pleasant atmosphere in and around a stairwell,” the architects added.

A roof garden at the top provides communal outdoor space tucked behind a parapet wall, while the ground floor comprises a parking place on one side and a cafe on the other.

Seoul studio OBBA was founded in 2012 by Sojung Lee and Sangjoon Kwak, who previously worked at Dutch firm OMA and Korean firm Mass Studies.

For more projects with interesting brickwork in South Korea, check out the perforated brickwork facade of a house, cafe and gallery building in Seoul or a house with a curved grey-brick facade that its architects compare to the body of a fish.

See more architecture in South Korea »
See more architecture with unusual brickwork »

Photographs are by Kyungsub Shin.

Here’s some more information from OBBA:

Beyond the Screen

Beyond the Screen is a new type of residential complex, located in Naebalsan-dong, Seoul. The existing condition of this residential neighbourhood is no different from most other neighbourhoods, with multiplex housing having held the majority.

The aim of this project was to offer a compact spatial richness for living, while finding new architectural solutions in satisfying the specific needs of the user, client, as well as contributing to the improvement of the typically generic townscape so familiar in Korea.

The building sits at a corner condition and is formed by a cutting and shaping of the volume by influences of the site regulations such as setback lines and natural light requirements.

The outer appearance is a single mass, however, it is actually two masses bridged by a semi-exterior central stairwell with a unique brick screen to the front and back, forming an H-shaped plan, with a skipped floor structure from the east to west.

This five-story building incorporates both residential and commercial functions – the first floor with a café and a piloti parking space, and from the second to fifth floors, four different unit types making up 14 different units in total.

From a user’s perspective, the design took into consideration the following four points:

Courtyard

Upon entering the building, one encounters the courtyard with a semi-exterior stairwell that provides access to each of the 14 units, with a unique brick screen to the front and back. This screen filters the view into the building from the front, while allowing for the right amount of natural light and ventilation, creating a far more pleasant atmosphere in and around a stairwell.

The sunlight that filters through the bricks makes for a lovely courtyard, allowing for an atmospheric transformation throughout the day, every day.

Natural ventilation

By splitting the building into two volumes, it allows all of the units to have three open sides, maximising the natural cross-ventilation throughout.

Roof garden

The roof garden is open to the sky, with a parapet wall at full-floor height, creating a private communal space for the residents.

Privacy

The brick screen walls, in their orderly staggered stacking construction, allows for privacy from the exterior gaze of the adjacent buildings into the semi-exterior, semi-public core of the building. This filter is applied, not only in the central core zone, but at specific moments where the building closely faces adjacent buildings. This adds to the privacy of each unit, while allowing for the residents of each unit the flexibility in ventilation, allowing each unit to breathe naturally.

The design also takes into consideration the client’s point of view, with an attempt to satisfy cost efficiency and profitability through quality design:

Area

The skipped floor structure allows residents to enter their units directly from the stair landings, eliminating unnecessary, dead public hallway space, and maximizing the area for exclusive use.

Cost Efficiency

With a limited construction budget, but aiming to satisfy all of the essentials for living, the design of the building and the units focused on only the absolute necessities, without being superfluous with custom materials and built-in furniture, but with quality materials and fixtures that were economical.

Uniqueness

In order to provide the client with something new and different from the monotonous characteristics of the area, their needs were met through a quality of design that allows the building to stand apart within the existing streetscape of multi-family housing, both formally and in function, resulting in a new type of residential experience and use.

As designers, there was a need to find a new architectural solution for the unexpected and unplanned, such as the following:

Equipment

It is quite common for residential buildings to attach and expose air conditioning equipment on the exterior of the building. In order to keep to the intended design of all four elevations of the building, spaces were allotted for such equipment into the overall plan of the building, as well as an application of the brick screen system for ventilation and air circulation for HVAC.

Ad-hoc expansion

To avoid illegal additions and extensions to the original design of the building in the future, which is a common practice in Korea, especially to buildings lacking a specific logic, there was a great focus in efficient spatial planning and design to allow for longevity in the initial design intentions and the spatial organization of the building.

Harmonized distinction

A unique design calls attention from its surrounding neighbours and residents in sparking an interest in a new design sensibility, and to form and awareness and appreciation for beautiful buildings and well designed spaces for living. Due to the changes of living patterns in the city, the number of single to double occupancy living units has grown. Rather than contribute to the increase of thoughtless and monotonous residential typology, the focus of Beyond the Screen was to provide new architectural design solutions to improve the quality of compact living through and enrichment of spatial qualities and functions.

Project: Beyond the Screen
Building name: NBS71510
Design period: 2012.06 – 2012.08
Construction period: 2012.09 – 2013.02

Type: residential, commercial
Location: Seoul, South Korea
Site area: 215 square metres
Site coverage area: 128.08 square metres
Building-to-land ratio: 59.57% (max. 60%)
Total floor area: 427.24 square metres
Floor area ratio: 198.72% (max. 200%)
Building scope: 5F
Structure: RC
Finish: brick, Dryvit

Architects: OBBA (Sojung Lee & Sangjoon Kwak)
Structural Engineer: TEO Structure
MEP Engineer: Wonwoo Engineering
Construction: YIINSIGAK

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by OBBA appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch studio MVRDV has transformed the facade of an ageing mixed-use building into a stack of shop windows in Gangnam, the trendy district of Seoul described in the world-famous Korean pop song.

Positioned amongst the designer boutiques of Apgujung Road, the 1980s Chungha building contains a leather accessories store on its ground floor. The upper levels accommodate more private businesses, including a wedding planner and two plastic surgery practices, so its tenants had previously covered over the strip windows and created a messy-looking exterior.

For the renovation, MVRDV removed the beige stone cladding and original glazing and replaced them with a facade of 18 boxes, each with a glazed shop window across its face. Different boxes were handed over to the various tenants, who can either fill them with product displays or screen them using translucent posters.

“The windows no longer correspond with the interior,” MVRDV’s Jan Knikker told Dezeen. “The general ambition was to keep them as large as possible. The upper windows also follow view lines across the city.”

The boxes feature curved edges and the outer surfaces are clad with tiny mosaic tiles. “[They] resemble white foam from close-up and smooth white stone from further away,” say the architects. A similar bubble pattern decorates the windows.

A new upper storey is set to open as a rooftop cafe with outdoor terraces.

MVRDV’s other recently completed buildings include a shop and office complex disguised as an old farmhouse and a public library inside a glass pyramid.

See more architecture by MVRDV »
See more architecture in South Korea »

Photography is by Kyungsub Shin.

Here are more details from MVRDV:

Gangnam Style: MVRDV completes building transformation in Seoul

Just before a Korean pop-song became a global success on YouTube for the first time in history, and Gangnam became world famous as the nouveau riche hangout of the South-Korean capital Seoul, MVRDV was commissioned by Woon Nam Management Ltd. to redefine a building on Gangnams chic Apgujung Road. Even though the Chungha building was completed in the 1980’s it was already outdated in a street dominated by flagship stores. The transformation, which added an extra level, was completed in just 9 months.

The Chungha building had become a rotten tooth in a fast changing streetscape dominated by single brand stores, this building contains a collection of brands in one. On the previous façade, a motley collection of fonts competed for the attention of passersby. The sober building’s beige natural stone façade was ruined by commercial messages. The ground floor is occupied by French leather accessories label Louis Quatorze, the floors above hold a wedding planners’ office, the clients’ maintenance society and two plastic surgery practices. The discretion required by the clients of the plastic surgeries also had implications for the building. The windows of these floors were hermetically sealed, adding to the worn out feel of the structure.

The new façade concept is convincingly simple: Chungha is a multiple identity building which was transformed into a collection of shop windows so each commercial venture imposed onto the façade would have a fitting canvas for its display. The building’s façade becomes more advertisement, and in that sense paradoxically more honest.

Curvaceous frames were found to be the best match to the large amount of shop windows, and a mosaic tile consequently became the façade material to follow the curves. LED lights change the buildings appearance. MVRDV was given nine months to complete the refurbishment. Adding to the complexity was the limited size of the construction site – five storeys tall but only 2,5 metres at its widest point. Construction workers were required to balance and squeeze themselves into narrow spaces.

Once unwrapped, the building appears reborn, its large windows are filled with transparent posters which provide space for changing brand identities and discretion for the clients of the plastic surgeon. A 10% addition on the top floor will be turned into a café with outside terraces, resulting in a total surface of 2,820 m2. The exterior façade tiles, which resemble white foam from close-up and smooth white stone from further away, are also used on the sidewalk and in the lobby.

MVRDV realised Chungha Building together with InC Design (co-architect and project management), Ain Construction, 1’st Structure, Total LED and M&S Ceramic.

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by MVRDV appeared first on Dezeen.

South Korean studio VOID planning used handmade paper and gravel to create the appearance of a misty landscape for this exhibition stand at a craft fair in Seoul (+ slideshow).

The stand, for hand-crafted furniture and products brand Onn, comprised a room with walls made from traditional Hanji paper, stained to create a natural gradient from dark to light.

VOID planning added narrow openings at each end to allow visitors to walk though the space over a gravel pathway that spanned the interior.

Furniture was positioned at the edges over a dark mirrored surface reminiscent of water.

“Walking along inside of the exhibition space reminds of taking a walk on a wet foggy lakeside in the morning,” say the architects.

Smaller items were presented on a raw timber shelving unit that formed an obstacle across the pathway.

VOID planning’s past projects include a stone-clad art gallery and a headquarters for a cosmetics company. See more architecture and interiors in South Korea.

Photography is by the architects.

Read on for more details from VOID planning:

2012 Craft Trend Fair [Onn] by VOID planning

The Onn booth of ‘2012 Craft Trend Fair Seoul’ shows the direction successfully under the title of ‘Beob Go Chang Shin’ (which means create new one based on the old one).

Onn is a brand of masterpiece which is carefully classified and selected under the present standard of values and tastes of Millenary Jeonju culture. These premium handcrafted products are well blended traditions with modern designs by cultural asset masters. Materials and colours, products of Onn are inspired by nature and it lights up the traditional peculiarity.

The exhibition booth was constructed to remind a scene of nature as Onn desired, and the space becomes an art piece itself harmonised with the products by Onn. Walking along inside of the exhibition space reminds of taking a walk on a wet foggy lakeside in the morning. Gradation effect of Muk on Hanji which is traditional colour and paper of Jeonju stands becoming the wall and gravels are spread on the floor. All of these extraordinary scenes of nature reflected through the black-mirrored pathway on the floor. This collaboration seemed like watching an epic oriental painting as it was.

Design: VOID planning
Design Director: Shin-Jae Kang, Hee-Young Choi
Art Director: Woong Chul Choi
Location: COEX, 135-731 Samsung-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
Floor area: 90m2

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by VOID planning appeared first on Dezeen.

UK studio Universal Everything motion-captured a dancer to make this animation, which is projected onto the world’s highest-resolution screen (+ movie).

“We choreographed a contemporary dancer in a motion capture studio,” Universal Everything founder Matt Pyke told Dezeen. “We then transformed the motion capture data into a digital sculpture, formed from the trails of human movement.”

The hundreds of white light points that form the dancing figure become strands that glow yellow, then red, before solidifying into blue as the dancer moves across the screen.

Universal Everything produced animations at a highly detailed 16K resolution for the 25-metre-wide by four-metre-high screen in the Hyundai Vision Hall, located at the South Korean motor group’s Seoul campus.

“The film was produced at such a high resolution to achieve a life-sized dancer moving through the space,” said Pyke.

The studio and various collaborators created 18 short films for the hall to turn it into “a space that inspires leaders, engineers, scientists, workers and designers to learn, rethink, and collaborate.”

More digital installations on Dezeen include Arik Levy’s interactive screen that uses visitors’ movements to mutate computer-generated crystals and a wall of digital animals that distract children on their way to surgery.

See all our stories about installations »

Universal Everything sent us the following information:

Hyundai Vision Hall

Euisun Chung, Vice Chairman of the Hyundai Motor Group (HMG), has a vision for the company that he leads. His aim is to align HMG with the best contemporary art, sculpture and digital design in the world. Artistic invention and innovation will be at the heart of both Hyundai and Kia’s future vision.

“The Vision Hall at Hyundai Motor Group’s Mabuk Campus is a symbolic space for presenting employees with Hyundai Motor Group’s values, providing them with a sense of pride, and sharing with them its dreams. The media wall, the central focus of the Hall, screens three video artworks that convey the vision and core values of the group.

An interactive artwork ‘Who Am We’ by world-renowned artist Do-Ho Suh was designed to develop pride and solidarity among the group’s employees and was produced through the participation of employees throughout the world. A metaphorical film series ‘Mobius Loop’ by Universal Everything expresses the group’s vision, management philosophy and core values. The third film, ‘Documentary’ depicts the last 10 years of Hyundai Motor Group’s history.

The Vision Hall – through continuous development of diverse creative content in collaboration with the group’s employees is a digital media archive that conveys and communicates the vision of Hyundai Motor Group” – Euisun Chung

To date HMG have collaborated with leading exponent and practitioner of Korean art Do Ho Suh, architect Elho Suh, and Peter Schreyer – Chief Design Officer for KIA, one of the world’s leading automotive designers (and a fine artist in his own right). The latest talent to be invited on-board are Universal Everything (UE) – an internationally acclaimed, UK based multidisciplinary studio working at the crossover of digital art and design.

The HMG Vision Hall

The Vision Hall is the first physical manifestation of E.S. Chung’s thinking. A contemplative and Zen like space at the entrance to Hyundai’s Mabuk University Campus – Elho Suh’s minimalist masterpiece that sits high in the verdant hills outside Seoul. Measuring around 900sqm the Hall is stripped of superfluous decoration, allowing visitors to appreciate its rich palette of materials and more importantly to concentrate the eye on its focal point and crowning glory – a 25m wide, 4m tall, 44k resolution screen seamlessly constructed from 720 micro tiles.

This is a space that will greet the majority of HMG’s 80,000 worldwide employees over the coming months – a space that will allow leaders, engineers, scientists, workers and designers alike to learn, rethink, collaborate and be inspired.

Universal Everything’s brief

Universal Everything were commissioned to fill the world’s highest resolution screen with content that would simply ‘inspire’. Such creative freedom is indeed rare. Matt Pyke, UE’s founder and Creative Director, was specifically asked not to include any brand related slogans or logos – furthermore he was requested not to feature Hyundai or Kia cars currently in production.

The sole ‘commercial’ request was to nod at the ‘mobius loop’ concept that underpins HMG’s whole ethos and production process. This loop symbolizes the infinite cycle of resource circulation and serves to connect all the innovative, creative activities and events of the Group into an organic whole. As an illustration HMG make steel to make cars, and then the cars are recycled to make more steel.

“The sheer scale of the vision hall, and the freedom that the HMG granted us gave us the power to create powerful, immersive audio-visual experiences which had never been seen or heard before. The commission allowed us to push our ambitions, transforming familiar subjects and materials into hyper real beautiful abstract expressions” – Matt Pyke

The intention is to allow Hyundai and KIA’s staff to digest the work openly and personally – to allow a deeper connection and to arrive at their own interpretations of the artworks – possibly seeing the familiar in the unfamiliar. The shear scale and resolution of the onscreen content combined with an immersive sound system would instill HMG’s staff with a sense of shared pride and solidarity – making them realize that they are indeed an integral part of the ‘bigger picture’.

Why ask UE?

UE were asked on board at the inception of the Vision Hall project as HMG’s ‘digital artists in residence’. The invitation came on the back of artistically pioneering and challenging work created for (amongst others) La Gaite Lyrique – Paris’ brand new Digital Art Museum, Deutsche Bank’s Hong Kong HQ and Coldplay’s sell out world tour of 2012.

UE’s response

The project has been the studio’s most ambitious project to date – requiring the core staff of 4 to swell to over 30 for the duration of the project. Matt Pyke and long term collaborator, director Dylan Griffith’s response to the challenging brief has yielded 18 films in total, ranging in duration from 00’40” to 02’45”. Created exclusively for their architectural context, the films allow the giant screen to become a ‘stage’ – a performance space that is often filled with life size humans and abstracted production processes.

The films mix a myriad of animation styles and live action – building upon UE’s trademark ethos of ‘maximum innovation’. Abstraction is pitted against familiarity to engage all types of viewer – whilst themes such as nature, technology and mans relationship with them feature heavily. All areas of HMG’s activity are explored with hyper real vision and audio – from steel creation to architecture, construction, future technologies, the corporation’s diverse multi-talented workforce to car design and production.

GGI studios in London, sound engineers in Germany and the UK, Korean programmers, an Italian Director of Photography and Film Directors from Amsterdam and Hong Kong were choreographed from UE’s home base of Sheffield, UK.

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by Universal Everything appeared first on Dezeen.