Shopping, food and fun combine in D Cube City, a vast futuristic complex in the South Korean capital offering a world of experiences under one roof

Details

Project: D Cube City, Sindorim, Seoul, South Korea
Client: Daesung Corporation
Architecture: Jerde Partnership
Interior design: JHP

Project Details

With the premise 'A World Within a City', the D Cube City complex, which sits over Seoul's largest transport interchange, certainly had high expectations to fulfil. South Korean firm Daesung Corporation requested a giant mixed-use development that would contain two 50-storey residential towers, a 40-storey office, five-star Sheraton hotel with helipad, a convention centre, one of Asia's largest theatres, gyms, spas, parkland and retail areas.

This ambitious and pioneering scheme has been accomplished by lead architects and master planners the Jerde Partnership and London design consultancy JHP, which designed the key retail interior areas such as luxury accessories, cosmetics, fashion and lifestyle, kids' world, food areas and the World Street fair.

'The location, the south west of the city, is rapidly being transformed, much in the same way Stratford is in London, to house new residential, commercial and entertainment facilities,' says Steve Collis, joint managing director of JHP. 'It straddles three tube stops and a mainline station, so with so much human traffic through the area our interior design for the mall had to cater for every type of customer.'

JHP has put its all into this impressive project, involving monthly meetings in the South Korean capital and weekly videoconference calls.

Jerde's architecture takes its cue from the 18th-century Korean landscape painting Mountains and Rivers Without an End, so has an undulating structure, mimicking the flow of water that continues into the shopping mall space. Here there is a series of pools which can be seen through glass ceilings as well as an interior waterfall that spans several of the five floors. Reflecting this approach, JHP has created lightweight glass reinforced gypsum (GRG) ceiling features; on the cosmetics floor they allude to fish or leaves in streams, and in the food halls they are inspired by tessellating pebbles. The GRG structures have the added benefit of hiding services from view.

JHP had worked with many of the brands, such as Accessorize and Espoir, on their global in-store designs, so also collaborated on the schemes for this development. 'It is a vast complex,' explains Collis, 'and on the lower floors such as Young Fashion it really is a bit of a maze, so much of our job was wayfinding, guiding the customers to the big brands and the public spaces.'

Much of this has been achieved by dynamic lines of LED light that lead people through the space and cross at important points, as well as touches such as coloured acrylic strips around the erimeter of branded areas. JHP worked with a Korean lighting consultancy, Lunar Lighting, on the scheme and used iGuzzini products. Lighting also provides a fun element to the ceiling design on the children's fashion floor, where Barrisol discs are sporadically illuminated from within to create the effect of 'something like Smarties running along the length of the space,' as Collis puts it.

Flooring also provides a navigation tool, with varying colourways of Chinese marble and composite stone tiles, denoting walkways and display areas. The food hall zones feature a darker and heavier look of tile, for a more 'market' feel. Each branded food unit has its own stone-clad unit, with a shadow gap at the bottom for a floating effect. Above each 'stall' is a painted white glass extractor ood that covers the whole unit and has a red interior, each one identical (except for the branding).

Both JHP and the client are delighted with the results. 'The client is thrilled, not only with the quality of the experience that the project represents, but also with the very impressive commercial results,' comments Collis. 'And for us it has led on to further projects in the country as well as Hong Kong and other locations in the Far East. So it is bringing lots of good things to us.'

This article was first published in fx Magazine.