The design for the Sewoon site proceeds from the assumption that cities benefit from great spaces even more than
they do from great individual buildings. We remember London for Trafalgar Square, Tokyo for the Ginza, and New York
for Rockefeller Center. This design for Seoul creates such a space at the center of the subject block. While office and
residential buildings reinforce street wall and park edge, strategically placed openings connect external zones to an
inner courtyard space. Thus, the block becomes a permeable structure, connecting side and corner to corner. The
most important of these connections forms a diagonal axis linking the Euljiro subway corner with the Park/
Chungaechun intersection. Pedestrians are encouraged to flow from the urban traffic node to the heart of the green
zone of the master plan. The buildings which make up this composition are configured as rectangular tubes and
cubes. Different uses are given a similar architectural language, and are knit together into a three dimensional urban
fabric. Public space proliferates from the ground plane to the sub grade, and up into the podium and upper reaches of
the buildings. Bridges, sky atria, podium terraces, and other instances of raised landscape create the sense of a
vertical city.Ultimately, the peaceful enclosure displayed in the heritage of the historical Korean palace (found in the
nearby Cheong Dok site) is married to the vitality of defense high-rise Seoul. The result is a modern day “rban palace”
where the energy of densely concentrated buildings is combined with a sense of shelter, containment, and spatial
harmony.