World Business Centre Busan

Location: Busan, South Korea

Client: Solomon Group

Built Area: 289,000 sqm

Date: 2006 (Competition)

Structural Engineer: Adams Kara Taylor, London

M&E Engineer: Scott Wilson, London

Quantity Surveyor: Davis Langdon & Everest, London

FOA Partner in Charge: Alejandro Zaera-Polo

Project Architect: Gunter Gassner

Design Team: Daniel Spreier, Christoph Trenner, Sukyeong Kim, Takeru Sato, Sukyeong Kim, Jeseon Lim, Mio Sato, Takeru Sato, Changho Yeo

World Business Centre in Busan aimed to produce a high-standard, mixed-use urban complex with a broad range of complementary activities. The project contains multiple programs, linking private and public uses, but also work, leisure and residential functions.

The central piece of the project is a tower (469,80m for the inhabitable part of the section, and over 559,70m with the antenna). In order to achieve the most efficient structure, the overall massing structure was designed to improve the structural performance of the building.

The tower presents a triangular section which mirrors the structural stresses of the tower. It becomes wider towards the base to increase the moment of inertia of the horizontal sections of the tower where the bending moment is higher, at the bottom, diminishing as it goes higher.  It also follows a Y-shaped plan that ensures that lateral forces are transferred to the buttresses of the plan, following diagonal rather than orthogonal lines. This strategy increased the effective structural depth for the lower floorplates. The complex is based on a hexagonal geometry as an overall grid.  This increases the angle between façade planes and reduces the stresses on the corners of the towers in the face of lateral stress.

The massing of the tower alone will optimize the structural performance to reduce the structural loading by 27% of an even sectional distribution for an equivalent height. By locating tertiary functions at the bottom of the tower and residential ones at the top we are automatically serving a double purpose of providing a structurally efficient massing to the tower, while automatically providing the adequate degree of privacy to the different functions. The different floorplate requirements between residential functions and workspace functions were used to diminish the volume of the building towards the top of the structure, to lower the centre of gravity of the tower, and to diminish the exposure to the wind on the higher levels. The corrugation of the form contributes to increase the moment of inertia of the horizontal section for the same floor area in the upper residential floors.

We have structured the socle and the base of the tower as a continuous set of spaces and programs designed to facilitate accessibility to the different functions in the project while providing an animated public realm at the base of the tower. The surface above the socle has been designed as a raised garden and will be accessible from a ramp towards the riverfront, and from a set of escalators on the Southeast corner of the plot.  A visitor attraction will also complement the urban program, exploiting the height of the structure and raising the international profile of the complex by attracting large amount of international visitors.