Moon bae dong
Packing three 20 story condominium towers on a trapezoidal site in Seoul, Korea was tricky enough. Add a city street running through the middle and a subterranean shopping arcade, and you’ve got a demanding urban infill challenge. IOTA and consortium partner PDI, produced a design that uses the site’s irregular geometry to its advantage. Fractured and faceted glass and concrete walls of the towers rise from a glowing base of retail and commercial uses. Bold geometric paving patterns by landscape architects Oslund and Associates define a pedestrian plaza that visually spans the intersecting roadway. The towers rise into the Seoul skyline with a stepped profile that accommodates rooftop gardens on half a dozen levels, and light filled polycarbonate wands thrust upwards like neon cattails into the marshy fog of the 21st century metropolis.