The proposal for Seoul’s Sewoon District 4 imagines the beginning of a new city neighborhood that is both specifically of its place and positively urban. The project celebrates dense urbanity, rich and diverse adjacencies, unexpected vistas, and large and small public spaces of all kinds.

Three major building types come together to produce the city fabric: a twenty-four-story double-loaded office/retail/residential tower; an eighteen-story single-loaded apartment block; and an eight-story residential building that houses retail on the bottom two floors.

Exceptional, recognizable buildings mark each of the site’s four corners and draw their forms from existing local typologies. The effect is that of familiarity, an urban fabric reminiscent of the existing neighborhood conditions: angular pedestrian paths, visual tightness, and a continuous commercial ground plane. The plan ensures cultural continuity while also providing something entirely new.