Songdo Landmark City Block A4 by REX

By Bustler Editors|

Thursday, Oct 14, 2010

REX' design for the Songdo Landmark City Block A4 (Image: Luxigon)

Currently a hot contender in the running for the new V&A at Dundee building, New York-based practice REX was asked to design a residential complex in Songdo Landmark City, Incheon, Korea in which every apartment offers direct southern exposure, cross-ventilation, and views.

Korean zoning guidelines and local building practices typically produce towers that fail to provide these three key, locally-prized amenities. Furthermore, prevailing site strategies carve up the open space such that the result is not the often-advertised “Towers in a Park,” but anemic “Towers in a Yard” instead.

Block A4 challenges conventional Korean development practices to provide the key amenities within each unit and a true publicly-accessible park at grade.

Aerial view of Block A4 (Image: Luxigon)

Detail of the slim towers (Image: Luxigon)

The façade is designed to combine flexibility with a consistent image. Depending on the preferences of individual apartment owners, any given façade opening can be finished as a floor-to ceiling window, an open-air balcony, or—with the use of a specially-designed manually operable window—an interior living space during cold months and a balcony during warm months. (Image: Luxigon)

Korean towers typically have four or more units per floor. As a result, many apartments have limited direct light, no southern exposure and poor cross-ventilation. By splitting a single tower with four units per floor into four separate towers with only one unit per floor, the resulting super-slim building type...

...maximizes direct lighting and guarantees southern exposure for every unit,...

Exaggerated visualizations from structural analysis (Image: Magnusson Klemencic Associates)

In conventional four-unit towers, the structural core occupies the center of the floor plate.

The small floor plate of a super-slim tower allows the structural core to become the tower perimeter. The resulting stiffened structural tube opens up the interior and eases space planning.

Surprisingly, the structural tube can be 50% perforated, as long as all openings are located to maintain continuous load paths and to minimize lateral displacement. The dynamic behavior of the perforated structural tube is well within acceptable standards.

...it becomes possible to reduce the project build time by 63% compared to conventional gang-form construction methods. (Image: Magnusson Klemencic Associates)

In Korea, gang-form construction is commonly used for the exterior walls and columns. Traditional concrete construction is used for interior bearing elements and floor plates. As an alternative, by using jump-up/Jackdown construction to build the perforated structural tube,...

The lobby of each tower occupies a double height space accessible from both grade and parking levels and provides daylight to below-grade community facilities.

The prevailing Korean superblock site strategy carves up the open space at grade with a tangled network of hardscape paths. The resultant pockets of green space are residual in character and more akin to yards than park.

By organizing the landscape at grade into a series of continuous bands, SLC Block A4 presents an alternative site strategy that will provide an open, active, pedestrian-friendly park. (Image: Bureau Bas Smets)

All vehicle access and parking is placed below grade, and the towers are sited within the parking grid. At ground level, the towers create a diverse hierarchy of open spaces.

The primary pedestrian routes are consolidated into only four hardscape paths, avoiding a patchwork that would, on a site of this size, disperse and diffuse activity and divide up the green space. (Image: Bureau Bas Smets)

Project Data:

LOCATION: Incheon, Korea

CLIENT: Songdo Landmark City (SLC)

PROGRAM: Residential towers with a total of approximately 2,000 units, community facilities, retail, and underground parking

AREA: 342,900 m² (3,691,000 sf)

CONSTRUCTION COST: Confidential

STATUS: Completed Concept Design

DESIGN ARCHITECT: REX

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: Bureau Bas Smets

EXECUTIVE ARCHITECT: HYUNDAI Architects & Engineers; SAMOO Architects & Engineers

KEY PERSONNEL: Adolfo Albaisa, Haviland Argo, E. Sean Bailey, Keith Burns, Nicolas de Courten, Rob Daurio, Jeremiah Joseph, Hui Lee, Katharine Meagher, Clinton Miller, Roberto Otero, Michelle Petersen, Joshua Prince-Ramus, Jacob Reidel, Nikolas Rychen, Tal Schori, Hala Sheikh, Nuo Xu

CONSULTANT: Magnusson Klemencic Associates

All images courtesy REX unless otherwise noted.

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