Architecture World: MVRDV Wins Gwanggyo City Center Competition in South Korea

Dec 14, 2008

MVRDV Wins Gwanggyo City Center Competition in South Korea

The Daewoo Consortium and the municipality of Gwanggyo announced the MVRDV concept design for a dense city center winner of the developer’s competition for the future new town of Gwanggyo, located 35km south of the Korean capital Seoul.The design will be one of two centers envisioned, a self sufficient city of 77,000 inhabitants located 35 km south of Seoul,which is a mix of housing, culture, office, retail, and leisure and education spaces. Various atriums are created in the towers catering to various categories, with box hedges being planted on the roofs and terraces which in turn improves ventilation and reduces usage of energy and water.

image(copyright MVRDV),(click 2 enlarge)-Aerial view day
“This diverse program has different needs for phasing, positioning and size,”say the architects. “To facilitate this all elements are designed as rings. By pushing these rings outwards, every part of the program receives a terrace for outdoor life.”

image(copyright MVRDV),(click 2 enlarge)-Aerial view day
Since the beginning of the millennium local nodes with a high density concentration of mixed program are used in Korean town planning. These nodes consist of a mix of public, retail, culture, housing, offices and leisure generating life in new metropolitan areas and encouraging further developments around them: the Power Center strategy. The Gwanggyo Power Center will consist of 200,000m2 housing, 48,000m2 offices, 200,000m2 mix of culture, retail, leisure and education and 200,000m2 parking.

image(copyright MVRDV),(click 2 enlarge)-Street view
This diverse program has different needs for phasing, positioning and size. To facilitate this all elements are designed as rings. By pushing these rings outwards, every part of the program receives a terrace for outdoor life. Plantations around the terraces with a floor to floor circulation system store water and irrigate the plants. The roofs of these hills and the terraces are planted with box hedges creating a strong, recognizable, cohesive park. This vertical park will improve the climate and ventilation, reduce energy and water usage. As a result a series of overgrown green ‘hills’ appear in the landscape.

image(copyright MVRDV),(click 2 enlarge)-Aerial view dusk
The site is surrounded by a beautiful lake and forested hills, the design aims to create a landscape on top of the new program that enlarges the green qualities and that links the surrounding parks by turning the site into a park.

image(copyright MVRDV),(click 2 enlarge)-Section
The shifting of the floors causes as a counter effect hollow cores that form large atriums. They serve as lobbies for the housing and offices, plazas for the shopping center and halls for the museum and leisure functions. In each tower a number of voids connect to the atrium providing for light and ventilation and creating semi-public spaces. On the lower floors the atriums are connected through a series of public spaces on various levels linking the towers and serving the outdoor facilities of the culture, retail and leisure program. The Power Center creates a dense urban program with a green regard.

image(copyright MVRDV),(click 2 enlarge)
The concept plan is currently at the Gyeonggi provincial authority’s Urban Innovation Corporation for further development and feasibility study, the entire new town will be a self sufficient city of 77,000 inhabitants. The estimated budget and timeframe are still in the process of being established, completion is envisioned for 2011. A consortium lead by Daewoo develops the project with local firm DA Group, which commissioned MVRDV to design the scheme. British firm Arup is involved as engineer.