In Korea, corporate visibility is everything and the Dongbu Corporation sought this in commissioning a competition for the renovation and re-clad of an existing building housing their insurance company. We presented three solutions ranging from conservative to aggressive employing a common unitized glazing system with three unique tops for each. Seoul is a city of towers. To stand out, the new exterior must be luminous in the evening and uniquely shaped for visibility during the day. The more assertive solutions are all about using the architecture of the skin to reach to the sky. One option, a crown of exterior framing creating fins with a glass skin arcing skywards is meant to render the building as a sail in the urban landscape while the other, a series of planes twisting and turning up the side of the building and is finally collected into a knife edge cutting into the night sky.

PROJECT DATA
Dongbu Insurance Company Competition Seoul Korea 17 story renovation and re-clad of an existing building - Mark Chen Principal in Charge with Hillier