UjooHyun Neighbourhood Living Facility / Chun Architects

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Text description provided by the architects. The meaning of Ujoohyun is a place where space and time come to life. Ujoohyun is a neighborhood living facility building built on a small 168 m2 plot of land in the Gangnam area of Seoul, Korea. It is also the office building of Chun Architects Firm. The identity of a city is created by so-called intermediate architecture, which exists innumerable times, rather than landmarks. I tried to create the universal difference of intermediate architecture in downtown Seoul through Ujoohyun.

Usually, small neighborhood living facilities built by architects in Korean cities tend to become typological. In order to maximize commercial value and presence, they are finished with distinctive materials, and they try to increase the amount of simple walls to stand out. The technique of hiding windows in exaggerated partition walls and making them look separate from the surroundings often appears.

Ujoohyun did not want to use simple compliance with the rental income of neighborhood living facilities or exaggerated techniques that are becoming typological. Ujoohyun wanted them to exist in the city with a humble and well-refined appearance. Because it is a small plot, we pushed the limits of volume given by the legal limitations to the limit but focused on the ‘spatial story’ that can be found within it.

We tried to find a three-dimensional space that is possible on each floor, which is difficult to experience in ordinary neighborhood living facilities buildings in the city of Seoul, Korea. We tried to create a rich interior space with an open space structure that responds to the possible programs that can be contained and the adjustment of light that changes depending on the conditions of each floor in contact with the outside.

We approached the architectural achievement that can be implemented from the basement to the 5th floor in detail. The basement is a space that allows light and ventilation and is a 4.5 m studio type that can accommodate various events. For example, it is a space that enables programs such as a small performance hall, lecture hall, photo studio, and workshop.

The small lounge on the first floor and the garden on one side were left open high to play a role of hospitality and public. The second floor, connected to the high-ceilinged lounge on the first floor, is a gallery-type with a long window on the floor, and the third floor is a design office-type with special sidelights coming in through the exterior brickwork. We planned a variety of spaces that respond to programs that can have various neighborhood living facilities. The 4th and 5th floors are places where legal limitations are sublimated into special spaces. The 4th floor has a living room space with a wide terrace overlooking the city, and the 5th floor has a special space with a 5m high ceiling that can increase the change of light by the hour with an open ceiling.

The interior is made of exposed concrete and birch finishes that reveal the natural properties of the material, making it an element that conveys an architectural sense of space. The ‘variation of space’ where architectural devices and details are connected reaches its peak on the 4.5th floor that touches the sky. It sublimates the limitations of the legal diagonal line into a three-dimensional space, giving an inner sense, and opens up the four sides of the city where Ujoohyun meets into different landscapes.

Ujoohyun’s surface is the result of constant mutual adjustment between the inside and the outside. The windows, which vary in size and finish in dark gray brick, form a neat and restrained exterior that clearly shows a presence while humbly permeating the city’s street escape. We wanted to present such a different kind of architecture.