Designed by ON Architects, This site is located in Ganjeolgot, which is famous for the earliest sunrise in Korea, and surrounded by the lands reserved for the creation of a new neighborhood park so as not to be available for any further development. Amongst the neighboring areas, it is located at the highest hill, a remote spot farthest from the existing commercial facilities in Ganjeolgot, and in its vicinity a public parking lot is supposed to be built, which we thought need to be considered for our proposal.
Photography: Yoon Joonhwan
For the program, the client required a commercial building (which was originally a personal cafe but changed during construction to a franchise store) run by himself as well as a guesthouse. We wanted not just to fulfill the client?s programmatic needs, but to recover the public sense of architecture by suggesting a commercial building for those who visit the neighborhood park and Ganjeolgot, as a culture complex mixed with the park.
Due to the low budget, we shunned a large-scale building but created void spaces in between buildings that can communicate with the outside and be recognized from anywhere without a particular direction. This process of design brought forth a layout resembling a pentagon, naturally. Also, the directionless quality will enable future visitors to approach this building from anywhere in the neighborhood park, communicating anytime with one another. We emptied out the center of the irregularly-shaped site and crea...