A Colourful Start-Up World: Pavilions in Seoul


Even in the Internet Age, it is clear that we cannot live without printed paper. Good, old-fashioned analogue reading is the purpose of the four pavilions built by Spacetong on the grounds of the former Ministry of Food and Drug Safety in Seoul. For the first time, the building, which is up to six storeys tall and features a rather standoffish brick façade, will become accessible to the public. It will be home to start-up and social enterprises.  The basic structure for all the pavilions but one is a steel square. However, the surface design and spatial atmosphere in each pavilion is unique. The colourful, tipped Attached Pavilion lurks like a parasite on one corner of the administration building. Its exterior is clad with red and yellow panels of enamelled glass. Grass-green light falls through a Plexiglas pane. Hollow steel profiles from the scaffolding have been used to create the exterior cladding of the Pipe Pavilion. Lacquered in all the colours of the rainbow, they have been attached to the exterior of the glazed cube, whose front opens up like a large barn door. The third square, called the Mirage Pavilion, plays with our perceptions. Its exterior cladding consists of polished stainless steel sheeting which casts a distorted reflection of its surroundings. The inside surprises us with its transparent roof and large tree stumps that suggest a continuity between interior and exterior space.  Only the Membrane Pavilion deviates from the cubes. Its onion-shaped steel structure is clad with a translucent PVDF membrane which, at sundown, transforms the pavilion into a luminous body. In the original concept, this small building is meant to remind us of a flowering bud growing among cliffs.