JYA-RCHITECTS has designed the headquarters of education companies Fineman and Krassen in the Samjeon-dong neighbourhood of Seoul’s southeastern district of Songpa-gu. The two companies, which already have several educational outlets in Seoul and the metropolitan area, but needed separate headquarters to support the branches in an efficient manner. In addition, the company aims to provide a new direction in the market as an educational company and provide higher-level education services at the same time. The architecture of the new building took into consideration how to express such philosophy and goals in its architecture was an important point of planning.
First of all, the lower floor, which is a rental space, has created a volume to secure the maximum area. On the other hand, the third to seventh floors, which will be used as HQ offices and educational spaces, were intended to break away from the existing educational space, namely the image that comes to mind when it comes to academic spaces, and to provide new experiences for teachers and children. To that end, a terrace was built so that students could go out from the third to the seventh floor. This allows teachers and students to go out to the terrace between classes or before and after to relax while enjoying the breeze or enjoying the scenery outside.
The terraces are also connected from the outside through stairs, allowing you to move the terraces on different floors and enjoy the surrounding scenery from various heights. From the terrace, the second Lotte Tower is clearly visible. This structure is hard to experience in traditional education spaces, where most of them have only indoor spaces. In other words, rather than filling the space with efficiency and density as a priority, the owners’ instead wanted to focus on providing a better environment for teachers and students who spend a considerable amount of time here. Through this, they aim to create a more positive effect on everyone physically and psychologically in the long run.
The building took motifs from the piled-up shapes of books and conceived the form. This was intended to express the purpose of the building, which is the office building of the educational enterprise. But in addition to this, lead architect Jeong Yeon wanted to change the image of the academy, which was originally created by the words “efficiency and density”, into “empty and interesting”.
Project details
Architect In Charge:Youmin Won, Janghee Jo, Dahye Jung
Manufacturers: AutoDesk, Eagon, Trimble Navigation
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Photos: Hwang Hyocheol
