A rippling brick facade fronts the headquarters of textile manufacturer W-Mission in Seoul, designed by architecture studios Behet Bondzio Lin Architekten and BCHO Architects.
Located in the Seongsu-dong neighbourhood, the 9,500-square-metre building combines seven floors of offices with three storeys of public areas including a cafe, shop and exhibition and workshop spaces.
It is marked by its rippling facade, which German studio Behet Bondzio Lin Architekten and South Korean firm BCHO Architects based on the materiality of cloth.
The studios also referenced the area’s collection of former factory buildings, opting for red brick on the exterior and minimal interiors of exposed concrete and steel.
“[The area] has a great legacy of manufacturing buildings made with traditional red brick masonry,” said Behet Bondzio Lin Architekten founding partner Yu Han Michael Lin.
“W-Mission fits perfectly as a textile company in that context, and we believe the new headquarters can embrace the past as well as reinforce the vibrant urban future of the area,” he told Dezeen.
Facing the adjacent road, the western red-brick facade has been given a distinctive rippling finish, which increases in intensity as it moves up the height of the building.
The area behind this undulating facade houses the block’s services and circulation, as well as double-height spaces and external terraces for the offices inside.
Both the rippling facade and flat brick elevations are punctured by small, “apparently random” openings that respond to the building’s internal requirements.
“The curtain-like, undulating facade is intended to act as a spiritual visual background for the urban perspectives of the streets that lead into Seongsu-dong District from the west across the Seoul Forest Park,” said Lin.
“It reflects on the material properties of textiles, to which our client has dedicated her entire life. The lightness of fabrics, their weaving patterns, undulation and enclosure as well as disclosure.”
Above a basement car park, the nine-storey block is split into three programmatic areas – a “community zone” on the first three floors, four storeys of general offices above and the three-storey headquarters of W-Mission on the top three floors.
Entering via a cut-out on the ground floor’s northwestern corner, the public areas are organised around a triple-height atrium connected by a sculptural metal staircase.
Contrasting the red-brick exterior, the interiors of the building feature grey masonry and exposed concrete, with semi-reflective metal used for the window frames and balustrades.
Elsewhere in Seoul, Kengo Kuma and Associates recently completed the Audeum audio museum, which is surrounded by layers of suspended aluminium pipes designed as an “architectural instrument”, and Melike Altınışık Architects has opened a spaceship-like museum dedicated to robotics and AI.
The photography is by YuChen Chao Photography.
