Business parks the world over have many things in common, notably

banality. In most cases, the architectural results of this form of

commercial entrepreneurship are dire, with any traces of individuality
ruthlessly obliterated. Unimaginative urban plans predominate,
populated by blocks of overpowering uniformity, usually wrapped
in monotonous curtain wall facades. The Digital Media City (DMC)
in the north of Seoul, not far from the former World Cup Stadium,
is a case in point. Though not yet fully developed, it shows all the
hallmarks of an indistinctive sprawl of high-rise blocks, so the
potential for exceptional architecture is necessarily limited. Yet in
this apparent wasteland, Singaporean developer Pramerica has made
a powerful architectural statement with its rst speculative ofce
building by Berlin-based architects Barkow Leibinger, who are also
former Emerging Architecture winners (AR December 2001).
DMC B6/2 Ofce Building (as it is prosaically known) contains
20 000sqm of space for approximately 700 employees. This is divided
over 11 storeys of ofces and showrooms, together with a roof
garden and ve levels of underground car parking facilities. Plot size
and the footprint of this almost exactly square building (35m x 35m)
is also regular. But this is where the conformity ends. In a remarkable
act of architectural autonomy, Barkow Leibinger step outside
the norm on this tightly restricted plot. With barely 3m distance
between the new building and its neighbours, they dene their own
architectural hemisphere within an otherwise conned and arid
terrain. As contextual cues were virtually non-existent, the architects
worked from inside out. In order to maximise space on the ground
oor (to accommodate a column-free, 8m high showroom space for
a German machine tool manufacturer), the core was not located
centrally, but in the eastern corner. For structural reasons it was cast
in reinforced concrete and its outside walls covered in black zinc
shingles to make an explicit contrast with the otherwise dominant
structural glazing. All the remaining ofce oors are open plan and
executed in a conventional steel frame with a 16m clear span.
So far the clearly orthogonal and rational plan, with the exception
of the indented and triangulated entrance to the lobby, falls within
the rigid guidelines set by the business parks management. But a
dramatic contrast is introduced in the treatment of the main glass
facade. Here, all attempts to accommodate convention and rationality
are metaphorically shattered. Plans and sections give little hint of
the surprising secret of the buildings outstanding three-dimensional
envelope of mirrored fractal glass. And so a different sense of order
is introduced and suddenly the building is quite the opposite from a
steady, static and orthogonal frame.

1
On a bleak Seoul
business park, Barkow
Leibingers utterly
orthodox block is
distinguished from
its utterly orthodox
neighbours by its
crystalline facade.
2, 3
Details of facade. Flat
and three-dimensional
panels of mirrored
glass held in extruded
aluminium frames
combine to create a
scintillating external
envelope.

THE MIRRORBALL CRACKED

This standard spec ofce block on a Seoul business park is
transformed by a shimmering, prismatic, mirror-glass skin.

62 | 4

O FFICE BLOCK , S EOUL ,

SOUTH KOREA
ARCHITECT
BARKOW LEIBINGER

63 | 4

1
4
The new hall of
Entrance
residence lobby
is oneisof
dominated
by a
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suspended
on Bifrstsstaircase.
remote
5
campus. The otherDetail
staircase
worldlyofIcelandic
which
leadsdominated
up to a
landscape,
mezzanine
level.
3
6
Detail of the ribbed
Main
entrance
copper
cladding, a
punched
the
new twistinto
on the
prismatic
skin.
more conventional
7
corrugated steel, a
Cladding
is
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local building
reprised
material.internally.

e
f

7B

R oof Garden

typical office floors

Typical Office Floor

a
b
c
d
e
f
g

c
A

main entrance
entrance canopy
typical 3D glazing element
typical 2D glazing element
screen wall roof level
parapet
window washing system

6
Typical S howroom Level

B
B

A
second
and third floors

A
B

5
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

detailed cross section through external wall

O FFICE BLOCK , S EOUL ,

SOUTH KOREA
ARCHITECT
BARKOW LEIBINGER

vestibule
lobby
application centre
coffeeshop
training/meeting
showroom
ofce

mezzanine level
B

B6/2

Susaek Station

2
A

World Cup
Stadium
Station

Sky Park

DMC

Glow Park

Mapo-Go
Office
Station

Peace
Park

Han River

64 | 4

site and location plan

IG

G 0

65 | 4

ground floor plan (scale approx 1:1000)

A cacophony of visual splinters fractures the external skin which

warps and protrudes at razor sharp angles. Two basic types of oorto-ceiling windows, one in two dimensions, the other in three, were
developed with Arup Facades in Berlin and Hong Kong. The threedimensional panel is rotated by 180 degrees every other window
and the entire facade geometry is moved on by one window frame
at each new oor, creating the inimitable prismatic shiver that runs
over the building. From a constructional viewpoint, though individual
window frames may appear bewildering in their complex totality, they
are in fact customised and standardised using standard aluminium
extrusions. Still, such a unique facade could not have been built
without exceptional design input and the latest CNC saw cutting.
Alutek manufactured the four-way joints that hold the all glued
Viracon glass in place with the greatest precision.
Like a shocking mirrored blizzard, the B6/2 Building blasts over
the tepid landscape of the Digital Media City, gloriously subverting
the formal order. Barkow Leibinger have hijacked dull convention
by implanting an architectural Trojan horse. Any impression of
regular structural glazing is shattered to smithereens and the entire
character of the buildings skin takes on new and dramatic dimensions.
Unexpected reections of the densely populated and heterogeneous
surroundings are mirrored on crisp prisms of the facade. Messages
from another world descend on the building as light, clouds, trafc
and people move over the angular, reecting skin. Life in all its facets
is mirrored and warped by the kaleidoscopic surfaces and after dark,
the building transmutes into a shimmering Chinese lantern.
Seen in the context of Barkow Leibingers consistently inventive
oeuvre, the facades linear origins betray familiar traits. For instance,
in an earlier project for a distribution centre in Ditzingen (AR March
2004), the glass skin is veiled by a ne mesh. In Seoul, however, the
facade is turned into an agent provocateur. Outside space is absorbed
as part camouage and part lter to become a fractal topography.
Perceived as a vertical landscape, the building constitutes its own
little universe. But despite this highly expressionistic feature, worthy
of comparison with Bruno Tauts famous Glass Architecture, no
mysterious new worlds lie behind its idiosyncratic reections just
ofce space. Could this fractured mirrorball be the perfect skin and
symbol for the digital world of the twenty-rst century? In any case,
the DMC and Seoul should relish the presence of such a memorable
and mould-breaking new building. CHRISTIAN BRENSING

8
Typical as yet
uncolonised office
floor, its experiential
dreariness mitigated
slightly by the
distracting play of the
external skin.
9, 10
Seoul surroundings
filtered through the
crystalline cladding.

Architect
Barkow Leibinger, Berlin
Project architect
Martina Bauer
Structural engineers
Schlaich Bergermann & Partner, Stuttgart;
Jeon & Lee Partners, Seoul
Facades
Arup Facade Engineering, Berlin/Hongkong;
Alutek, Seoul
Photographs
Christian Richters

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O FFICE BLOCK , S EOUL ,

SOUTH KOREA
ARCHITECT
BARKOW LEIBINGER

cross section BB looking south-east

10

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