South Korean Architecture

In the bustling streets of Seoul, the Dongdaemun Design Plaza by Zaha Hadid Architects has become a landmark for its atypical architecture. A complex yet effortless building, the Design Plaza encapsulates the energy of the cultural hub in Dongdaemun, an area that has itself earned the nickname of the "town that never sleeps" thanks to its late-night fashion market.

Traditionally, Winter Olympics stadiums have stuck to a design that obscures the sky and protects against the elements in order to keep the guests warm. This year, the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics organizing team wanted to try something different. Guests will watch the three-hour opening ceremony at the PyeongChang Olympic Main Stadium – and it will be roofless. 

2017 was another banner year for skyscraper construction.

The team of Simplex Architecture, Dongsimwon and studio201 has been selected as the winners of the Yisabu Dokdo Memorial Park International Competition. The international competition asked designers to create a new memorial and monumental park in the city of Samcheok, South Korea, that would tell the story of the voyage undertaken by legendary general Yisabu to the islands of Usanguk and Dokdo in 512 A.D. Located on a 24,600-square-meter site overlooking the Sea of Japan, the project will serve as center of education, experience and tourism while engaging the essential elements of earth and water as well as the five senses.

MVRDV has collaborated with Korean school children to complete a new permanent urban installation tor the third edition of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation’s Gwangju Folly Festival. 

Today the Mayor of Seoul opened the Skygarden, a 983-meter elevated walkway designed by MVRDV which utilizes a formerly abandoned highway in the center of the South Korean capital. Located in Seoul's Central Station district, the 16-meter-high linear park features a living catalog of Korea's indigenous plants, featuring over 24,000 individual plants from 228 species and sub-species. The Skygarden is known in Korean as Seoullo 7017, a name which references the Korean for "Seoul Street," and the 1970 and 2017, the years in which the structure was originally built and subsequently transformed.

Architectural photographer Marc Goodwin, in cooperation with Felix Nybergh, has recently completed the fourth collection of his "ultra-marathon of photoshoots" – this time in Seoul. Following Goodwin's unique insight into the spaces occupied by Nordic architectural offices (based in Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Helsinki), his look at studios both large and small lived in by London-based practices, and his lens on a collection of Beijing-based studios, he and Nybergh have now turned their attention to the rich architectural scene of the South Korean capital.

Since 1953, the 160-mile (260 kilometer) strip of land along the Korean Peninsula's 38th parallel has served as a Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. The DMZ is more than a border; it's a heavily guarded, nearly four-mile-wide (6 kilometer) buffer zone between the two countries. Each military stays behind its own country's edge of the zone, perpetually awaiting potential conflict, and access to the interior of the zone itself is unyieldingly limited. Apart from the landmines and patrolling troops, the interior of the DMZ also holds thriving natural ecosystems that have been the subject of studies on what happens when wildlife is allowed to flourish in the absence of human contact.

KPF’s Lotte World Tower in Seoul, South Korea is officially complete, according to criteria established by the the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). At 555 meters tall, the building becomes the tallest building in Korea (250 meters taller than the previous tallest building, Northeast Asia Trade Tower) and the world’s new 5th tallest building.

Architectural research initiative arch out loud has announced the winners of its DMZ Underground Bathhouse international open ideas competition. The brief challenged participants to create an underground bathhouse within the Korean Demilitarized Zone, responding to long-running geopolitical tensions between North and South Korea. Ultimately, nearly 300 proposals and 900 participants explored how architecture could position itself in the middle of these turbulent conditions, seeking out new forms of non-military architecture to improve relations between the two states.