Seoul, how have you built?

People coming to Seoul soon recognize that in its layered form, little to big changes are always brewing. Here are some of its most beautiful buildings, instilled with some of its fleecy beauty, found in someplace among those layers.

This compiled list was much inspired by the current architectural curator of MMCA. She has been on the job since 2013, when its Seoul branch was first open. Before that, she worked with Space Magazine, which you can find at www.vmspace.com, producing special features on Dubai, timber and Danish architecture, etc.

 

 

 

Arario Museum In Space

 

 

 

Most of it built in 1960, this place with ivy all over the brick wall, delightful human-scale stairs and open ceiling was given more addition as time went by, until the building was handed over to domestic Arario Museum, when the original architects' own office that had occupied it went bankrupt.

 

Nowadays you can visit the museum and have refreshment in its Hanok, meaning a traditional Korean house, encased between the authentic purple brick building and the later transparent addition from the 1990's. 5 minutes from Anguk subway station.

 

 

 

Kukje Gallery K3

 

 

 

This gently undulating gallery, placed at Kukje Gallery in Sogyeok-dong, Jongno-gu in Seoul, offers daring features : such as the blue sea WAVE (actually a name for one of its past exhibitions) and other exhibitions thereby reminding one of the blue sea, beaches and the like. Designed by American architects SO-IL and Florian Idenburg, this silver grey space possesses a definitive Teepee look, boasting warmness and up to a more than 6-metre high ceiling. (The surrounding area, Bukchon, has for years been tended to as part of a Non-governmental urban regeneration scheme, and lots of traditional houses (Hanok's) in Bukchon have been given beauty treatment.)

 

 

 

Amore Pacific Headquarters

 

 

 

Begun as a cosmetics company, Amore Pacific has been currently housed in its Headquarters in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. This spacious-looking place, with its 29 floors, looks like endlessly repeating platinum letter T's on its outside. Natural light comes in from every direction through the open plan. The architects are David Chipperfield Archiects and Haeahn Architecture. They have been in charge of its construction from 2010 the designing year, to 2017, the completed year, and have turned their multiple-awarded rectangular building spread open out on all sides, still intact with those silver T's.

 

 

 

 

National Museum of Modern and Contempory Art (MMCA) in Seoul

 

 

 

Open in November 2013, this Seoul branch of MMCA in Sogyeok-dong is praised for its square-shaped 3-ground-level building and for its pleasant, bright and constant colour scheme. Also, behind the rectangular MMCA building, there are two formal and elegant Hanok buildings for the highest governmental Joseon officials re-creating the atmosphere of the older era coming to an end.

 

 

 

HyundaiCard Design Library

 

 

 

Designed by Choi Wook with ONE O ONE architects and constructed in Bukchon in 2012, this space has a sizeable madang (Korean word for courtyard) as well as lots of books and reading sections (there are many books) in warm glow. Double-storied with external stairs and a Hanok loft, it features bluish white facade and glass walls.