Seoul Dancing Dragons
Korean developer DreamHub has started building a new largescaled development in Seoul - Yongsan International Business District (YIBD). The plan is striking in its ambitiousness. The overall project, Yongsan International Business District (YIBD), is a new district in Seoul which is to be built over an old rail yard. The development contains more then three million sq.m of operable space and buildings designed by 18 international architects from all around the world.
Twin towers of Dancing Dragons for YIBD designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture. The buildings, which include residential, “officetel” and retail elements, consist of slender, sharply angled mini-towers cantilevered around a central core. The design aesthetic is highly contemporary yet informed by aspects of traditional Korean culture. The mini-towers feature a dramatic series of diagonal massing cuts that create living spaces that float beyond the structure. This recalls the eaves of traditional Korean temples - a design theme echoed both in the geometry of the building skin and the jutting canopies at the towers’ base. The theme is extended in the building skin, which suggests the scales of fish and Korean mythical creatures such as dragons, which seem to dance around the core - hence the project’s name (Yongsan, the name of the overall development, means “Dragon Hill” in Korean.) Dancing Dragons’ scale-like skin is also a performative element.
Gaps between its overlapping panels feature operable 600-mm vents through which air can circulate, making the skin “breathable” like that of certain animals. Towers 1 and 2 - about 450 meters and 390 meters tall, respectively - share an architectural language and, therefore, a close family resemblance, but are not identical. In the taller structure, the 88-level Tower 1, the massing cuts at the top and bottom of the minitowers are V-shaped. In the 77-level Tower 2, the cuts move diagonally in a single unbroken line; they are also arranged in a radial pattern around the core that is perceptible as viewers move around the tower.
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Materials provided by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture