FORUM27_Plaza for Open Communication, a joint entry by W Architects (Lee Wonsuk) and design lab (Park Dongju) won the International Competition of a New Headquater Building for Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education.
The competition was held as part of the construction project for a new office to relocate the current Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) office to the former site of the Sudo Girls’ High School in Yongsan. The project site is located near the Seoul’s largest park scheduled to construct according to the relocation of the U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan, and urban redevelopment projects are expected to bring major changes to this area. In response to this urban context, the new office had to fulfill its public role as the educational hub of the local community and to meet the expectations of a new public office.
The winning project satisfied the requirements with an internalized atrium. The atrium, enclosed by the entirety of the seven-storey building, visually integrates the common spaces of the educational hub and work areas. The first floor is a lobby space, which brings the urban context into the building. It accommodates a cafe and lounge which are open to the residents of the neighbourhood. The educational hub is on the second and third floors, which is three-dimensional extension of the urban street on the first floor. It is designed as a type of terrace that can be accessed from various levels and accommodates autonomous programmes that can be used by various parties such as students, teaching staff, and parents.
Public access to the office area is not permitted from the fourth to seventh floors for reasons of security. Nevertheless, the architects wanted to keep its common space visually open by making it face the atrium. In addition, the concept of the smart office was proposed to make the space flexible in terms of creative tasks.
‘This project succeeded in achieving public value in public architecture by using cubic volumes and integrating the internalized lobby space’, the judging panel noted, adding ‘the programmes have been newly shuffled as if they had tried to criticize the traditional spatial layout of public offices’. They continued, ‘This open public plaza, extending the urban street to the
educational hub heralds the advent of a new type of communication in the community.’ The SMOE will grant the right to carry out scheme design and construction design to the winner, which will be launched in Aug. this year, and other winners with a prize of 10 million to 40 million KRW. In addition, they plan to carry out scheme and construction design based on the design by Aug. 2019, which is scheduled for completion in Nov. 2021.
Cho Heeyeon (superintendent, SMOE) said, ‘The new office will help realise futureoriented educational innovation, providing various spaces for communication, empathy and fusion among students, teaching staff, and parents. I look forward to seeing it serve as an education hub for Seoul.’