折叠地面社区设施丨韩国首尔丨LIFE Architects

Architects:LIFE Architects

Area:1108m²

Year:2023

Photographs:Kyungsub Shin

Lead Architects:Jeeyoung Han, Sooyong Hwang

City:Mapo-gu

Country:South Korea

Text description provided by the architects. What stance should a building take on the bustling streets near Hongik University, filled with the vibrant energy of a university town? "Folded Ground" is a neighborhood facility that thoughtfully explores ways to interact with its surroundings on a site bordered on three sides by Wausan-ro and a playground.

The site, located right in front of this public and cultural space, is a project that not only serves as a backdrop to the area's cultural context but also needs to fulfill a commercial role as a neighborhood facility. The biggest challenge at the start of the project was figuring out how to make the interior spaces of the business and commercial facilities respond to the vibrant atmosphere of the Hongdae area. With three sides of the site visually open, we considered the relationship between the surroundings as seen from the outside and as experienced from within.

The site, facing three sides of Hongdae's Wausan-ro and the playground, was deemed to have an especially important visual relationship with its surroundings. While always bustling with people, it also creates a peaceful atmosphere within the park. We pondered how to engage with such a place and foster a relationship with it. The three continuous facades act as a single expansive "ground" that responds to the site's diversity. As these surfaces fold and overlap, they create new relationships between interior and exterior spaces.

The building's interior spaces, balconies, and concrete exterior skin provide pockets of open space within the densely packed urban environment. These spaces are mediated to form distinct relationships with the surroundings, depending on their functions: commercial areas requiring external exposure, office spaces demanding appropriate privacy, and voided areas for vertical circulation.

The diagonal concrete structure fragments external views into dynamic, multifaceted frames when seen from the interior. As one moves vertically through the interior spaces, it feels as though they are exploring within the structure itself. This structural element, which crosses between the inside and outside, allows for an experiential continuity between above and below, as well as between interior and exterior.

The views that pass between the structural elements offer users unexpected scenes. Within the enveloping structure, users feel a sense of maintaining a comfortable distance from the complex and dynamic context of Hongdae. Pedestrians, too, can discover a building that provides a moment of respite when they come to the playground, away from the sudden and overwhelming flood of buildings and signs in Hongdae.

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