Architectural Drawings: Seoulâs Cultural Projects in Plan and Section
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Seoul blends the old with the new, tradition with innovation. The bustling capital of South Korea is a city where history and modern life are juxtaposed in the built environment itself. Showcasing a diverse range of architectural styles and projects, Seoul’s cultural landscape is home to inventive and inspiring buildings that are grounded in human experience.
Architectural plans and section drawings tell a story of Seoul through intricate details and comprehensive design strategies. Each of the following projects explores construction and process through built work. They reveal the ideas behind some of the city’s most notable projects. From grand museums to intimate galleries and sprawling complexes to innovative community spaces, Seoul’s architectural scene is as diverse as the city itself. Through a survey of section and plan drawings, we gain insight into the spatial organization, materiality and conceptual framework of these projects, uncovering the stories and inspirations that shape Seoul’s identity today.
National Assembly Communication Building
By HAEAHN Architecture and H-Architecture, Seoul, South Korea
Popular Choice Winner, 11th Annual A+Awards, Government & Civic Buildings
The National Assembly Communication Building at the Republic of Korea Complex embodies the ideals of flexibility and openness. It integrates seamlessly with the existing monumental masterplan while catering to daily activities. The four-story structure is designed to blend into its surroundings, respecting the existing tree line and maintaining a height of 30 to 40 feet. The building’s layout is organized into horizontal zones to accommodate diverse users, ensuring privacy and efficiency.
Circulation and security are handled by four cores around a central courtyard. The modular structure system allows for future adaptations. The building symbolizes democratic values and houses various public, media, political, and administrative programs. Its design fosters communication and interaction, both inside and outside the building, as seen in plan. The design creates a vibrant and welcoming environment.
Saemoonan Church
By Lee Eunseok+KOMA, Seoul, South Korea
Jury Winner, 8th Annual A+Awards, Religious buildings & Memorials
Saemoonan Church, the first Korean Protestant church, celebrated its 132nd anniversary and opened a new church in Gwanghwamun Sinmunno. The design, resembling a mother’s embracing arms reaching toward the sky, breaks from traditional spire and Gothic architecture, a significant shift in modern church design. The new church focuses on four themes: historicity, symbolizing its role as the mother church of the Korean Protestant Church; spatiality, portraying Christ as light through an open door to heaven; a water space representing baptism’s meaning; and harmony. These themes were revised to incorporate God’s love and neighborly love into the design, emphasized through spatial symbolism and outward appearance.
The design emphasizes simplicity and abstraction, with the facade’s soft curve symbolizing love and mercy, and the fan-shaped chapel encouraging dynamic participation in worship. The architecture prioritizes public engagement, with the facade’s concave surface and courtyard of Saemoonan-ro serving as public spaces, welcoming citizens and fostering community interaction. The church also includes a small chapel made from its old bricks, serving as an open cultural space.
Nodeul Island
By mmkplus, Seoul, South Korea
Popular Choice Winner, 8th Annual A+Awards, Architecture +Urban Transformation
Nodeul Island, an artificial island in Seoul’s Han River, was long neglected despite its natural beauty and central location. This project revitalizes the island, creating multi-level public spaces with cultural programs that honor its history. The redesigned island offers diverse activities and fosters a connection between visitors and the city’s landscape. The island features two main levels: the original ground level hosts cultural venues, while an upper platform provides public plazas and viewing decks.
A village-like setting houses offices, shops, galleries and performance halls, fostering a harmonious community. The island’s landscape encourages social interactions, offering a park-like experience. Restoration efforts include sustainable strategies and an eco-habitat for endangered species. A new public promenade, upgraded terraces and gardens enhance the island’s history. Nodeul Island is now a vibrant public park and cultural venue, inviting visitors to explore its historical significance and potential.
Seoul Square Ice Rink
By CoRe Architects, Seoul, South Korea
Seoul Plaza transforms into a winter sports hub for citizens from Christmas through February, featuring skating and curling. The skating rink, redesigned and reopened in 2018 through a public competition, introduces a new, easily recyclable structural concept. Unlike previous years, that year’s rink boasted a “new structural alternative” that could be swiftly installed and recycled. Originally conceived as a light vinyl house, it evolved into a double air-dome system for easier reuse or recycling.
The roof is a double air-membrane structure made of transparent laminated urethane and opaque flame-retarded urethane. The membranes, supported by about 40,000 ropes, allow natural light during the day and internal light at night, creating a unique façade. The skating rink’s design combined equilateral triangles and circles, with a triangular deck facilitating movement between the plaza and the Seoul Library. A circular auxiliary facility complements the modern reinterpretation, enhancing citizens’ spatial and temporal experiences.
Kukje Gallery
By SO – IL, Seoul, South Korea
The project aims to enhance Korea’s cultural presence globally while harmonizing with the historic surroundings of northern Seoul. The design blends modern aesthetics with traditional techniques, featuring a unique chainmail veil façade made of 510,000 metal rings. To integrate seamlessly into the historic urban fabric, the gallery’s circulation is pushed to the edges, and the entire structure is wrapped in the hand-fabricated veil. This approach, developed in collaboration with engineers at Front Inc., marries computational processes with traditional craftsmanship.
The gallery’s design is sensitive to its context, with materials and patterns inspired by cobblestone streets and regional building styles. Located amidst traditional hannok homes, the gallery serves as a landmark in a cultural campus and aids in public wayfinding. The building’s form, reflecting the surrounding rooflines, creates a sense of lightness and blends with the environment. Despite its compact size, the gallery offers a versatile space for art exhibitions and events, including a 60-seat auditorium for lectures, films, and performances. Support spaces such as offices and storage are located underground, ensuring flexibility in gallery use.
Platform-L Contemporary Art Center
By JOHO Architecture, Seoul, South Korea
Platform-L Contemporary Art Center is situated in Seoul’s Gangnam district, nestled in a residential area. The site’s unique irregular trapezoid shape, surrounded by streets on three sides, posed a distinctive design challenge. Adhering to architectural regulations limiting the building ratio to 60% of the total site area, Platform-L took a unique approach by placing parking underground, creating a voided space on grade.
The center’s design features two independent masses with a central courtyard facing west, maximizing space efficiency. The north mass houses the museum’s entrance, exhibition spaces, a VIP lounge, and a roof terrace offering cityscape views. On the south end, a café/restaurant and office spaces are located. The exterior facade design draws inspiration from Louis Quatorze fashion design company, the sponsor of Platform-L, reflecting Louis XIV’s basic geometries. This reinterpretation symbolizes the company’s commitment to fashion and culture, serving as a new emblem for its values.
Roof Sentiment
By SoA(Society of Architecture), Seoul, South Korea
The front yard of MMCA Seoul faces the Gyeongbokgung Palace, a strong site-specific context. This space, once part of the Jongchinbu (Office of the Royal Genealogy in the Lee dynasty), is now an open public area of MMCA Seoul and serves as a platform for Y.A.P in the summer. Traditional architecture in Gyeongbokgung Palace is characterized by its prominent roofs. Han-ok (traditional Korean style-house) roofs were large and heavy to support the wooden pillars, creating a high and deep space underneath.
The lines of these roofs framed the scenery with the mountains in the background, symbolizing a connection to the heavens and expressing political, sacral, and societal meanings. The ‘Roof sentiment’ project aims to rekindle people’s feelings and senses by creating a wrinkle roof using reed blinds. This roof sways in the breeze, offering glimpses of the scenery through its gaps. Unlike traditional roofs that cover the under space, the wrinkle roof uncovers people’s sentiments, serving as an agent to awaken people to the summers and the area’s unique atmosphere.
National Aviation Museum of Korea
By HAEAHN Architecture, Seoul, South Korea
The National Aviation Museum, located in Gimpo Airport, aimed to elevate the Korean aviation industry’s status through a multi-cultural space promoted by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport. The museum’s design reflects three core ideas: “Air Turbine,” inspired by airplane turbines, symbolizes the integration of mechanical aesthetics and science technology; “Air Show,” an aviation gallery, presents the history of Korean aviation in a dynamic, panoramic exhibition space; and “Air Walk,” a three-dimensional walkway, offers a dynamic experience amid the architectural structure’s shining lights.
The site’s layout is circular, including the southern beltway and the main entrance road, creating a central position between the airport and support complex. A three-floor void in the permanent exhibition space allows for integrated indoor-outdoor exhibitions through a transparent façade. The museum features two buildings: a circular exhibition hall designed for aviation displays and a rectangular management building optimized for various functions. The interior of the eco-friendly air turbine is a spiral exhibition space, guiding visitors through the planes on the ceiling and creating a dynamic experience.
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This residence was designed so that clients could enjoy the crystal-clear waters of a lake surrounded by ancient forests in the Moletai region of Lithuania. The villa consists of 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and an open-concept dining area connected to the living room. Rectangular in plan, the dwelling has cutouts and sloped roofs that combine in a sculptural way. This layout prioritizes connection to the landscape and indoor-outdoor living.
Situated on the river shore, this home was made of glass and rusted steel planes mounted in vertical segments. The plan is organized around this, opening up to the surroundings. For the materials, the idea is to have a metaphorical relation with the growing pine trees on the site. The rough concrete texture left by the formwork is the main interior expression. In addition, transparent and smooth glass surfaces ae widely used, making the interior feel visibly closer to nature.
The House in Trakai was a study in clear geometry and vertical space. In Lithuania, there are clear depictions and traditions of the country-house. A vernacular idea, the design team wanted to make their own fresh take on this classic. In plan, this takes the shape of a rectangular footprint set on a deck, while the section is an extruded “house” profile with a steep roof pitch. “Everything that a family might need to relax in the natural surroundings fits into a modest archetypical volume with no sacrifice of comfort.”
True to its name, the L House is directly tied to its shape in plan. The residence was built for a private client based in Vilnius, Lithuania. When the team started the project, the architects were inspired by the beauty of the site and its relationship with nature. The central concept and guiding principle was the desire to maintain a delicate balance between nature. The result is the subtle volume of the building, a single story house.
For this four-member family house, the project was located in the seaside resort town of Palanga. It features a slope and is framed by a forest wall on top of the hill. All living spaces are lifted above the street level and focused on the forest, while the utilitarian spaces are positioned on the lower level. The scheme was divided into three separate volumes corresponding with three functional zones.
Valley Villa is an iconic home in Lithuania. Just a few hundred meters from an active city street, the home is located on a sunny slope near the outskirts of town. It is designed in place of a former farmstead. A key goal was to maintain the existing slope on site and to preserve as many trees as possible The idea of the building was to “hang” it over the valley and open the building up with continuous windows. Due to the black shale finish, the ground floor seemingly disappears in shadow.
YCL’s Birdhouse residence is located among a dense block of private houses in Vilnius. The key wish from the clients was to have a big common space not divided by stairs in any way. So the team chose to move the stairs out of the main perimeter of the house, a guiding idea in plan. This creates a shape that looks different when walking around the house. The north part of the house with the stairs has just one round window, like a birdhouse that waits for its dwellers.
Ensamble’s design for the Telcel Theater was buried underground with a large metallic structure lifted from ground level. This creates a dramatic open-air volume that rises above and below the ground. The structure above appears as a stone of air, supported by the space that comes from a sequence of excavated terraces. Below, the excavated spaces are given to the public and open to the sky, protected by the symbolic metal structure.
Designed for the community center of San Bernabé, this project offers a building-street which aimed to transmit civic values inherent to the urban structure of the neighborhood. This building-street was conceived as a framework for the relationship and the expression of individuals and the community, so that it will be getting stronger as the citizens start to discover it and living freely in it.
Mar Adentro was inspired by the “enormous drive of water under a scorching sun.” This piece of land, located in the middle of a coastline dotted with “All Inclusives,” and the team wanted to challenge what would have been a box similar to other structures in place. The central idea was to take the horizon and bring it into the foreground. Mar Adentro is a kind of Medina that opens out onto the sea.
This chapel project was reimagined inside a tequila factory, located in the northeast of the state of Jalisco. The region is known to be one of the most religious areas in the country. This spiritual and social space is a reinterpretation of the mixed use spaces that exist in older haciendas and houses of the region, where people used to have a chapel or oratory in their own houses, adjacent to the terraces and open covered spaces, where social and family events were commonly held.
After devastating earthquakes in Mexico, this project was designed to rebuild an identity that uses public spaces as its media. At the heart of the design was a close interaction with the inhabitants of Jojutla. The core idea came from the trees. These unique elements survived the earthquakes without damage, therefore, the Civic Centre of Jojutla became the “Central Gardens of Jojutla” evoking the concept of resiliency by means of the vegetation.
“In March 2021, an Evergreen container ship blocked the Suez Canal waterway for six days. In a scenario in which the ship had never managed to leave the canal, people in need of homes would have brought their lives aboard. While the Egyptian government has been dragging people out of their homes in Warraq and Sinai as development plans move forward, people are forced into poorly planned habitats that pay no real attention to people’s needs or their economic activities.
“This drawing illustrates a forest that has been populated with housing pods made out of mycelium, conceptualizing the utilization of this material in modular architecture.
“Threshold: The focal point of the picture is a human standing on the water’s surface, facing the light (referring to the Truth) diffusing from a cracked wall in an uncanny cave. The philosophy of art and visual arts questioning the “reality” and “illusion” frequently refers to Platon’s “the allegory of Cave”. The picture uses a cave metaphor as well as a “the allegory of uterus” referring to the human’s first home which is conceptualized by the curvilinear forms.
“During its rapid growth in the late 1800s, New York City formed most of its current modern city fabric. As a city of immigrants with its own cultural insecurity, New York borrowed the architectural style of its diverse ancestral European roots in an attempt to create a historic urban context. This European influence, combined with the advancing construction technology and socioeconomic factors of the time, forged a unique architectural environment. Architectural elements of different origin, whether ornamental or functional, were melded into New York’s building facades; architectural manifestation of “insecurity”.
“This drawing imagines an alternate reality and economic reverie where the Great Depression never happened, a need for stripped to the basics skyscrapers averted, and the stylistic impressions of the era continued to roar for decades onward. This depicts a parallel Chicago, devoid of modernist glassy structures. A staggered stone skyline is a hazy backdrop to airships hovering at startlingly low altitudes.
“Depicted is a city that has yet to exist, one where passion, freedom and love fill the towers that rise above, an example of the pleasures art can bring, the idea that like people buildings represent individualism. What is depicted in drawing is a world where art, math and science become the forefront of the built environment and humans are able to liberate themselves from the natural world.
“Stair mazes will always be dynamic structures for the human spatial experience. Humans have the instinct to create infinite space through limited materials so that a certain relationship can be formed between limited life and the infinite universe. Stairs are important elements of a maze — connecting different heights and circulating up and down. The winding pink staircases, the main subject of this drawing, give the building a very large number of possible paths, forming a complex labyrinth.
“Inspired by the iconic book Invisible Cities. by Italo Calvino, this drawing tells the story of Octavia, a city suspended above the Earth by a spider’s web of cables and wires. Interpretations are limitless, but in my interpretation, the inhabitants of Octavia depict the central truth about humanity – connections are profound – but tenuous; just as is our grasp on life itself. Isolation is not sustainable and connectivity – for all its impermanence – remains a more beautiful response.”
“Cafe Palace selected a series of plans of landmark buildings with different cultural backgrounds according to the composition of immigrants in the block, which served as the inspiration and design starting point of the overall underground space layout. Through the redefinition and blend of different architectural styles, an architectural atmosphere similar to the situationist concept was created.
“The conversation around future space travel intensifies, illustrating an intrinsic tension between a childlike excitement towards space travel and a corrupt governmental elitist control. As the world we know deteriorates under our feet, we desire to preserve, to resist, to survive. Fable or Failure takes an architectural approach of dividing a traditional spacecraft into three sections.
“In March 2021, an Evergreen container ship blocked the Suez Canal waterway for 6 days. In a scenario in which the ship had never managed to leave the canal, people in need of homes would have brought their lives aboard. While the Egyptian government has been dragging people out of their homes in Warraq and Sinai as development plans move forward, people are forced into poorly planned habitats that pay no real attention to people’s needs or their economic activities.
“Stair mazes will always be dynamic structures for the human spatial experience. Humans have the instinct to create infinite space through limited materials so that a certain relationship can be formed between limited life and the infinite universe. Stairs are important elements of a maze—connecting different heights and circulating up and down. The winding pink staircases, the main subject of this drawing, give the building a very large number of possible paths, forming a complex labyrinth.
“Peter Eisenman commented on John Hejduk’s Berlin figures that they are not architecture “because you can’t get in them.” To which Hejduk replied, “YOU can’t get in them.” The work questions the degrees of accessibility in which users/participants can have agency/authorship to a piece of architecture. The notion of authorship can be understood as a form of intellectual property, where participants can only be allowed to travel with the designer through the meaning/essence of the work using their imaginations, only if the work was explained to them.
“Dear Diary,
“Chungking Mansion is located in Hong Kong. It has brought together traders and asylum-seekers from South Asia and Africa, temporary workers from India and cash-strapped tourists from all over the world. It is a building that represents “low-end globalisation”.
“The world was once filled with secluded and mysterious villages. The populations of these villages each lived and died in their own immaculate beliefs, traditions, and laws, their respective cultures untouched by the outside world for eons. With what land, sea and sky would offer, they would farm, herd, weave, build and worship, all in harmony with the cycles of nature.
“During its rapid growth in the late 1800s, New York City formed most of its current modern city fabric. As a city of immigrants with its own cultural insecurity, New York borrowed the architectural style of its diverse ancestral European roots in an attempt to create a historic urban context. This European influence, combined with the advancing construction technology and socioeconomic factors of the time, forged a unique architectural environment. Architectural elements of different origin, whether ornamental or functional, were melded into New York’s building facades; architectural manifestation of “insecurity”.
“Art Expose is a Public Fabric Art Forum aiming to raise awareness and mend inequities within Melbourne’s art scene alongside a fibre arts community. Putting the public in the central spine, the discursive architecture seeks to mediate between prosperous art dealers and struggling artists. The scheme arms the public with tools for measured amounts of active and passive surveillance of art production, storage and sales.
“The Atlas – a loose assemblage of maps. It constitutes a multitude of scales within itself. It links between the content and its representations, creates relationships, and references – a hyperlink into the digital space. The atlas holds the weight of the digital mesh.”
“The drawing is a capriccio depicting a post-apocalyptic Semporna as a ‘debrisity’ serving as a reminder that anthropogenic coastal and ocean debris is never another speculation but a reality. The notion of this drawing is to question the precarity whilst disseminating the importance of waste management and striving for the betterment of the settlement and marine life of Semporna. Cities across the globe are sharing the same fate in that unless we become more conscious about the impact of marine debris, they are destined to bear the brunt of human activities. Water is quintessential to support all forms of life yet paradoxically, human narcissism has laid and continues to lay waste to cities that are granted access to the paramount gift of nature, water, turning the ocean into a gigantic dumpster.
“Content with the limitations of their small apartments and quaint terraces, warmly greeting their neighbors, and strolling among the stepped streets, the citizens of Synopolis greet the sunset each evening with decanters of bubbly concoctions, slowness in their constitutionals, diving into delectable sweets, and chatting away the day’s trials and travails over stacks of plates of tapas.”
“This drawing imagines an alternate reality and economic reverie where the Great Depression never happened, a need for stripped to the basics skyscrapers averted, and the stylistic impressions of the era continued to roar for decades onward. This depicts a parallel Chicago, devoid of modernist glassy structures. A staggered stone skyline is a hazy backdrop to airships hovering at startlingly low altitudes.
““This day has come, my young apprentice!” – said Remio Kulhassio, founding partner of the renowned architecture studio in Fornio, Italy.
“‘Ronin’s Lair’… an environment that lies between two parallel universes. These series of spaces are a continually morphing and warping training grounds for the ‘wayward samurai’. They are part Japanese Edo Period and part digital future, they are neither today nor tomorrow… they are in a continually shifting threshold space; a warped interim and an evolutionary and non-chronological series of physicality’s and landscapes. My explorations also lie within 2 worlds of the analogue and the digital, my submission is one of the analogue (ink on parchment paper) and it is one of a series of many such explorations in digital, analogue, and hybrid mediums.”
“If we strip away the technological advances of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, how do we ensure our ability to feel still exists in this digital age? Inspired by the Teatro Del Mondo “Floating Theater” (Aldo Rossi, 1979), this temporary structure floats in Tokyo Bay and is set to open every summer as a metaphor for the Japanese idiom: Ichi-go Ichi-e (one encounter, one chance), a celebration of the unrepeatable nature of every single moment.
“Threshold: The focal point of the picture is a human standing on the water’s surface, facing the light (referring to the Truth) diffusing from a cracked wall in an uncanny cave. The philosophy of art and visual arts questioning the “reality” and “illusion” frequently refers to Platon’s “the allegory of Cave”. The picture uses a cave metaphor as well as a “the allegory of uterus” referring to the human’s first home which is conceptualized by the curvilinear forms.
“Many see in architecture the plan, section, elevation, axonometric, and BIM model; mathematical conventions communicating the means of construction. However, drawing by measurement to prescribe beyond the floor, walls, and roof is a perverse overstep; measurements cannot make singular the continuous performance of everyday living.
“The drawing depicts the possible future of architecture, where buildings are grown organically using programmable bionanobots and natural materials that automatically assemble and fuse chemically via biological mechanisms. buildings will be grown.”
This private Hamptons residence was designed as an immersive retreat. Situated along a natural ravine and protected wetlands, the residence consists of three simple gable-shaped volumes, creating a dialogue between the natural grasslands and the built environment. A contemporary interpretation of a common New England building form, each volume is shrouded in horizontal wood slats which seamlessly wrap all wall and roof surfaces. A public great room is centrally located, acting as a social hub for family and guest interaction. Within the great room, special attention was taken to the design of the architectural concrete fireplace, countertops and black steel sash windows.
This retreat was conceived as a place for gathering family and friends as well as solitude. Located along the crest of a narrow ridge overlooking a broad valley, the drive that connects to the home turns to reveal a long, linear core of sawn stone that parallels the ridge, sliding under a single-slope roof through a steel-framed glass volume. The stone core, marked by two large fireplace masses, organizes the spaces, with primary circulation along its south face, while gaps in the stone provide access to each of the living spaces. In turn, clear and translucent glass along the south wall creates a play of light and shadow at the circulation spine.
Designed as a beach house within the forest, this home creates a connection between the drama of the nearby ocean and the sense of sanctuary provided by the trees. Composed primarily of one large room, the house is light-filled on the south side facing the ocean, while remaining insular and protected on the other side. Glass walls open the living area to panoramic views of forest and ocean with two fireplaces on either end anchor that the space and provide a feeling of refuge. Artworks were incorporated into the design of the home, with the fireplace walls specially designed to fit paintings by Sam Francis and Diego Singh.
This suburban pavilion is located adjacent to woodlands. A contemporary house surrounded by mature trees and manicured gardens anchors the site. A new swimming pool, stone walls and terraces located behind the existing house organize the rear yard and establishes a dialogue between the existing house and a new pavilion. New paths, trees and structured plantings reinforce the geometry. The new pavilion, intended for year round use, is strategically located to provide a threshold between the structured landscape and adjacent woodland. The doors pivot to open the space much of the year while a large Rumford fireplace and heated floors provide a cozy counterpoint in winter months.
This small residence is sited on the banks of the White River five miles from Mt. Rainier. The project was designed to quietly blend into the surrounding forest. An entry courtyard serves as a transition space from outdoors to indoors and keeps the ubiquitous elk herds at bay. A steel-clad fireplace mass separates the living room from a covered outdoor patio. By working diligently with the client (who also served as General Contractor for the project), the building footprint was kept as compact as possible to minimize site disturbance. The residence was made to epitomize the small home living movement.
The heart of a dilapidated brick corner house from 1929 was completely renovated and extended, incorporating an inviting sitting pit. The clients asked for more space, an open kitchen and a more direct relationship to the garden. The sitting pit forms a playful space around the fireplace, where the owners are able to stay together with each other, friends and family. Seen at eye level from the seating pit, there is a vertically sliding window on the street side. By sliding this open as well as the large sliding doors at the rear, visitors find themselves outside in a sitting pit, at a fireplace and under a roof. The fireplace sits in a solid block that, together with a thick wall on the other side and a wall parallel to the seating pit, supports the roof.
This residential cabin project is located in Krokskogen forests, outside the town of Hønefoss. The site is very exposed to the wind and the cabin is shaped to create several outdoors spaces that provide shelter from the wind and sun at different times of day. The interior is a continuous space finished in a thin layer of curved birch plywood. The fireplace is located at the center of the cabin. The fireplace mantel is hanging from the ceiling, while the fire is down at the floor of the access level. This provides the feeling of a campfire in the landscape that can be seen from different places.