Chrome Company Headquarters (2024 Beautiful Architecture Award)

Photo: ⓒ Hwang Hyocheol

Diagonally across from COEX, beyond the former KEPCO site where Hyundai Motor's new headquarters is rising, lies a quiet residential neighborhood. The building has two distinct facades. One is a narrow front that grows wider and taller as it ascends, creating visual and structural tension amplified by a unified, rough-textured material. The second facade is a wide side composed of multiple cubes, meeting the city at the corner; beyond the formal interest of the cubes, shadows cast by the sun throughout the day lend it an ever-changing expression.

The building offers an intriguing, constantly shifting image to the city and its people. A monochrome material was selected to maximize volumetric presence and tension, with a rough texture chosen to create finer-scale surface expressions beyond just the shadows cast by the volumes. Amid large sites and spectacular buildings rising around it, the aspiration is for this small but chic building to be a considerate yet unmistakable presence in the city.