Detail of the project ed. 2024

ban­po-church / South Korea

Design­er	Dongkyu Choi
Loca­tion	Seoul
Nation	South Korea
Design Team
Year	2015
Pho­to credits

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

The pro­gram request­ed by the client was larg­er than what could be accom­mo­dat­ed on the cur­rent site. To address this, the spaces for events at the com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter, called the church, were stacked ver­ti­cal­ly in layers.
The clien­t’s request­ed space pro­gram result­ed in a square for­mal vol­ume, with square cube box­es stacked on top of each oth­er. The largest space, the main chapel, occu­pies the third and fourth floors, while pro­grams such as a cafe­te­ria and com­pa­ny res­i­dence are above it. A book café, edu­ca­tion­al space, and gym­na­si­um are stacked above these.
Our design con­cept twist­ed the stacked cubes slight­ly to soft­en the rigid box shape and cre­at­ed stair­cas­es and path­ways for light to pass through the cracks and crevices of the twist­ed mass. These paths and stairs estab­lished visu­al and phys­i­cal con­nec­tions between oth­er­wise dis­con­nect­ed spaces. The ceil­ings on both sides of the main hall allowed light to pour down through sky­lights. Addi­tion­al­ly, the cafe­te­ria above the main chapel and the com­pa­ny res­i­dence were planned to con­nect to the exter­nal deck and stairs.
The exter­nal cube over­laps the two lay­ers of the shell, and the space between the two shells is opened to reveal the entrance and gate at the front. The tem­po­rary wall at the front was raised to its high­est height to serve as a bell tow­er where a cross could be placed. A frame-type open­ing was includ­ed in the tem­po­rary wall to enhance the pres­ence of the cross, with the cross posi­tioned with­in the frame. Sev­er­al small win­dows were added to the over­lap­ping tem­po­rary walls to allow light into the inte­ri­or space dur­ing the day. At night, light projects through these windows.
A sunken space con­nects the ground lev­el to the sec­ond base­ment lev­el, pro­vid­ing nat­ur­al light­ing to the under­ground edu­ca­tion­al space, with stairs nat­u­ral­ly con­nect­ing these lev­els vertically.

Explana­to­ry report of the project
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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