K2 Tower

The project is located at the intersection point between CBD area on Gangnam and the densely populated housing neighborhood, in other words, between the city’s domiciliation and labour. Due to the nature of the intersecting space, it is an urban domain in which various restaurants and beauty services — required for both parties — are provided during the busy night hours, recharging the life of exhausted people in a certain sense. The site is located inside the fragmented and congested city with numerous buildings, signboards, windows and walls, floors and floors, and it is extremely narrow when compared with the adjacent land. In addition, the required commercial-oriented programmes cover 2.5 times of capacity than the ground area, and due to the parking and daylight constraints, the upper and lower parts became to have plans consist of completely different angles and shapes. The basement, the first and the second levels on the lower part, which face the street, do not go through the core on the inside. Rather, as a continuation of the street, those levels have three-dimensional interfaces that extend through each independent exterior stair. In terms of the commercial facility, the lower part aims to make the front elevation as visible as possible, so the plan took on a trapezoid shape in relation to the parking space. Whereas the upper part forms a monolith volume in the three-dimensional shift of the two different types of reference planes, which is influenced by the rectangular plan for the work space regulated by the daylight control. The exterior wall of the freely curved surface — which is in contrast with the surroundings — serves as a main structural component, minimizing the columns on the narrow interior space and maximizing the space use. For the exterior envelope, the middle of the perforated area of the extruded cement panel was cut, and the sides were shifted and used as the louvers on the front. Through the endless repetition of double shades — the two thin blades on both sides of the perforation, and different depths between the louvers — a diversity of light was achieved. The curved surface is created in the differentiation of straight lines, and the familiar material is suddenly made anew through the display of the light and the shade.

Location : Teheran-ro 70-gil, Gangnam District, Seoul, Korea
Site Area : 239㎡
Building Area : 119㎡
Total Floor Area : 709㎡
Building Floor No. : B1F~7F
Building Height : 21.33m
Structure : RC
Building Material : Extruede Cement Panel, Low-e Glass

Jo Jinman Architects, Ltd.
Project Architect: Sang Kim
Design Team: Dongsub Um, Mingi Lee

Collaborators
Structure Engineer: TheKujo
MEP Engineer: GM Enc.
Contractor : Seojin General Construction

K2 Tower by Jinman Jo in Korea, South won the WA Award Cycle 30. Please find below the WA Award poster for this project.