Client: Gangseo-gu office

Place: Gangseo-gu, Seoul, South Korea

Date: 2021 Competition

Type: Civic

Area: 52,152m2

Budget: 139,520 million KRW

AZPML

Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Maider Llaguno-Munitxa, Ivaylo Nachev, Claudia Baquedano, Miguel Bello

SIMPLEX

Greg Park, Borum Kim

Our proposal for the new Gangseo-gu Government Administrative Complex is aimed to provide a building which will offer maximum connectivity and integration between different bodies in the organization, maximum efficiency in terms of environmental and ecological performance, maximum flexibility to adjust to future needs and changes, and an iconography that explains the organization and its communal civic values.

All programs are interlinked by a cruciform three-dimensional atrium which provides an environmentally conditioned joint public space which can be used in all seasons as a location for diverse municipal events. The atrium will open to the four cardinal points through 18m-tall, monumental gates, which will make the complex permeable, visually and physically from all directions, seamlessly connecting the monumental public atrium to the surrounding landscape.

The different components of the program have been piled to demonstrates physically the relationships between the different parts of the program The building is assembled as a piling of the four program zones in the complex, where the municipal administration is proposed as a ring of office space around a central atrium.

To mitigate the Heat Island Effects and improve the local microclimate, the building envelopes will be heavily vegetated to improve water retention and evapotranspiration. We will secure at least 35% of the biotope area for vegetation.

Our proposal is designed to optimize the environmental performance of the building, both in terms of energy consumption, carbon emissions, and embodied energy. We have used six strategies of environmental efficiency: The compact massing of the complex is aimed to produce a higher integration between programs, but also to minimize the envelope ratio.

A central atrium will bring light and ventilation to all the informal meeting areas located on the floor levels. The atrium will play a fundamental role in integrating the community, but also will provide natural ventilation to the public spaces. Using the height of the atrium as a natural ventilation engine, the air will be naturally extracted through buoyancy, reducing the need for mechanical ventilation in the offices. In the winter, the atrium will be heated by the greenhouse hot air, providing thermal buffering and recirculation, while in the summer it will act as a ventilation shaft, combined with sprinklers on the irrigation system for the planters located around the atrium, to provide adiabatic cooling.