Boston based architecture firm, PRAUD, has shared with us a recent competition entry of theirs for the South Korean Prime Minister’s Office and Residence in Sejong City, S. Korea. Follow after the jump for additional images and a concept description from the architects.
CONCEPT:
The site has a strong advantage of having natural topography and scenery. It has been developed as stepped farmland and existing buildings are sitting on the site with in a relation to its topography. It is a very typical siting logic in Korea which puts topographical lines into more important criteria than absolute direction.
Like traditional temple in Korea,this siting logic is possible because each building has a small footprint and is able to move its axis freely. Thus, in this project, we first decided to group required programs into four categories so that we can play around those smaller size masses.
Three masses that are related to public programs are located on lower level and each of them is sitting on the site with its own axis in a relation to the topography. The siting of lower masses make the upper mass, which is a residential program, possible to be free from the topography and follow the direction of the sun, which is more critical issue for residential programs.
This project is also part of the research project “Topology and Typology,” and we developed the idea of “French Fries” as topology and “Structural Pattern” as typology.
Architect: PRAUD + Sunghyun Architects Landscape Architect: Lee Yoon-joo, Park Kyung-ui Location: Sejong City, South Korea Site Area: 20,000 sqm Project Area: 2,975 sqm
