The twelve stories and five parking levels below grade were completed in only eighteen months – considered a breakneck pace in Germany, but normal in Korea. Arup Facades and the Korean facade manufacturer Alutek collaborated to produce an innovative reflective facade, a lucid reinterpretation of the 1970s with no recourse to nostalgia whatsoever. Inserted precisely in the dense fabric – at a minimal distance to its neighbours – it has become the distorting mirror of its immediate surroundings. Hundreds of silver, reflective, polygonal glass panes reflect Seoul’s disparate urbanity. Prefabricated glass elements span floor to floor and cover approximately eighty percent of the facade. A simple cube, one might think, were it not for the angled individual panes within the large-format frame construction. These elements are based on the same partitioning of window surfaces used in standard planar glazing. But the different elements alternate on each storey, and, on top of that, every other element is rotated 180°, resulting in the overall kaleidoscopic effect of fragmented, mirrored surroundings. In the individual modules sun protection and thermal protection are superimposed. The sharp-edged abutting surfaces with their mitred, conventional extruded profiles contain panes which are at once transparent and translucent. Arup was involved in the design phase, specifications, construction documents and site supervision, and Alutek further pursued the optimisation and standardisation on site. The architecture is – with perhaps the exception of the suspended mezzanine level – restrained and distinguished by a rigorous and understated functionality.
