This 35-storey headquarters tower for the Dongbu Corporation is placed in Seoul’s southern commercial district in Kangnam-ku. Because the site is directly close to the Posco building, which sets back from the main commercial boulevard of Teheran-Ro, its corner forms a significant boundary to one of Seoul’s busiest intersections. Kohn Pederson Fox designs the project from the argument that the major forces internal to the program, as well as those external to the building, could be best articulated in a layered organization of the core, displaced to the south as an east-west line segment due to the small size of the floor plate.

Views of the Han River to the north were preserved. Teheran-Ro, and a historically significant garden, also preserved. The Dongbu Financial Centre concept of ‘layering’ was inspired from traditional Korean handicrafts such as shik-tak-bo, in which pieces of cloth are randomly patched together. The building’s services were layered vertically by means of an organizational core.

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