Merge in the Urban Rhythm: F&L Headquarters

SPACE October 2025 (No. 695) 

In 2022, ASK Architects was commissioned to design the headquarters of Fashion Flow (F&L), located near Dongho-ro in central Seoul. The commission called not for a conventional office block, but for an architectural structure that could coexist with the shifting identity of a brand while negotiating the intense flows within the city. The client expected a workplace that would not isolate itself, but instead merge within the urban context of Seoul. The building was asked to operate both as a place of work and as a cultural platform.

Site and Context

The site is situated only 200m from Yaksu Station. To the north, the Dongho-ro carries a constant stream of cars and pedestrians. To the south, a vast residential complex stretches across the hillside. The plot itself stands at the intersection between these urban flows and daily patterns, while also bearing traces of smaller structures accumulated over time. Retaining walls ranging from 4 to 8m in height define abrupt differences in level and required a careful, strategic approach in the early stages of design.

©Joel Moritz 

The Tyranny of the Piloti and the Podium

Across Seoul, the ground floors of countless buildings are given over to the logic of the piloti. Columns lift the structure above the ground, allowing space for parking. This model deprives the city of its most vital level, reduces streets to corridors of passage, and leaves architecture retreating into mute façades. F&L Headquarters rejects this formula. Instead, the building embraces the sloping of the terrain through its continuous podium. The podium is not a parking deck but a multi-level platform that connects different elevations. Stairs carved into the incline lead to a plaza, continue through a café, and eventually arrive at an interior courtyard. This sequence transforms movement into experience; pausing, meeting, and passing occur naturally across thresholds where the city and architecture blur. The podium becomes both the entry point of the building and a shared urban platform. Beyond its functional role, it expands the field of everyday encounters and acts as a symbolic expression of the brand itself.

Two Towers

The massing is split into two slender towers, freeing the central space between them. Tower One consolidates vertical circulation, shafts, and the canteen, serving as the infrastructural core. Tower Two contains meeting rooms, executive offices, and private programmes. By absorbing fixed functions, the towers release the centre into a column-free open plan, a zone filled with light, air, and flexibility. Structurally, the towers anchor the load while large concrete slabs span between them, reinforcing the sense of an open interior field.

The Open Plan

Conventional office towers rely on repetition. Identical floorplates are stacked one above another and perforated by cores and vertical shafts. They promise flexibility but enforce constraint. Every level is colonised by services and structure. Every so-called open plan is compromised from within.

F&L Headquarters reverses this model; programmatic weight is concentrated in two towers, liberating the centre from structural and mechanical occupation. The result is not an abstract gesture but a genuine open plan. It is a space that can shift from work to exhibition to event, adapting as functions evolve. More than efficiency, it represents a field of possibilities. This is a workplace that anticipates change rather than resists it.

Catwalk

The building responds to its context through calibrated shifts. To the west, it withdraws from the retaining walls and residential blocks to form a courtyard. To the east, it projects outward to define a small plaza on the street. This dual gesture of retreat and advance produces a sculptural silhouette while negotiating the pressures of the site. The motion is reminiscent of a catwalk, a sequence of moves that turn posture into performance and echo the brand’s identity through architectural form. F&L Headquarters is not a fixed object. Depending on one’s position, it can appear as an oblique mass rising shyly against the sky or as a singular, robust figure from across the street. From the slope, it gradually reveals itself as a building that holds a plaza at its front while unfolding depth across its façade. It resists a single image and instead offers multiple readings, synchronising with the flows of the city. In this way, the project positions architecture not as a definitive object but as an open framework that accepts time, perception, and use as active agents in its ongoing life.