Site Context
Site is located on the border crossing from Itaewon,S eoul’s emerging cultural and commercial center, to the urban redevelopment zone.
The site context was a place where small buildings were concentrated without unity, and it was a neighborhood where infrastructure was not well organized yet.
Project Name : Hannam-dong Office
Studio Name : Bcho Partners
Project team : Byoung soo Cho, Jayoon Yoon, Doyeon Kwon
Location : 657-42, Hannam-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Korea
Use : office
Site Area : 331㎡
Gross floor area : 488.09㎡
Structure : Reinforced Concrete
Consultants:
Structure – Dongyang Structural Engineers
Landscape – Garden in Forest
Photography Credits: Sergio Pirrone
The building was designed in a complex site context, focusing on having a solid identity without colliding with it and securing the comfort of function and space as an office.
Cookie Cutting Façade
The south-facing facade, the main elevation of the building, gives the building a character by a layer of concrete wall cut off six squares with different heights and widths outside the building. By placing one concrete layer used as a structure and elevation of the building, it controls the direct sunlight entering the office space and serves to filter the unorganized landscape of the neighborhood..
Structure
Functionally, openings were mainly placed on the south and north sides of the building to ensure sufficient natural lighting and natural ventilation. The walls on the east and west sides, where buildings are located on adjacent sites, are structural walls that can support post-tension slabs, creating column-free indoor spaces. On the north side of the building, there are cozy terrace and balconies surrounded by bamboo forests so that the interior space can be sufficiently connected to nature.
Material
It was finished with a warm red cedar siding inside the exposed concrete outer wall. The red cedar finish is connected to the plywood ceiling material in the interior, and takes the form of floating wood plates in a concrete box. The plywood ceiling material inside sincerely exposes its characteristics of the material and functionally solves sound absorption and lighting.
BCHO Architects
BCHO Architects is about twenty to thirty people firm. Founded in Seoul, Korea in 1994, the firm started as a design-build office with a focus on simple structures and strong regard for nature. The design team has been working very closely with contractors and multiple fabrication specialists in various disciplines; including stone masons, product designers, wood workers, potters, and engineers. The firm also has multiple professional collaborators throughout the world in North and South America. BCHO Architects believe that buildings, furniture and art are made, not created. Each architectural project, encompassing various scales and programs, explores the phenomenon of light and space, fabrication and construction methods, recycling and reusing, and a broad sense of sustainability (social/cultural/physical) which uses collective creative energy to reduce the demand for grid energy.
Jaekyung Kim