Dongdaemun Design Plaza is located in the historic city center, next to the ancient fortress wall and Dongdaemun Gate. Nowadays, the district of the same name is home to inexpensive but very popular shops for fashionable and vintage clothing and design items, most of which are open until 5 am, and some are open around the clock. The Hadid building is intended to further enhance the design component in the surrounding area and in the Korean capital as a whole. The four above-ground and three underground floors house two conference rooms and a press conference room, two exhibition halls and a 550-meter exhibition ramp, a design museum, a two-tiered design laboratory and an educational center, and a design market. The 4th underground tier is occupied by a garage for 300 cars.
Many of the Dongdaemun Design Plaza's spaces will be open 24 hours a day, as will the 38,000 m2 park surrounding the building. His solution, developed by the Gross Max bureau, develops the Korean tradition of gardening: the multi-layered landscape smoothly develops horizontally, and the border between the interior and exterior is blurred.
The frame of the building combines a frame structure and a two-layer structural shell. The facades are covered with 45,000 metal panels of various curvatures. At night, they are softly illuminated by LED lamps. Dongdaemun Design Plaza is the first building in South Korea to be designed using information modeling (BIM), enabling architects and engineers in London and Seoul to work faster and more smoothly than usual, and effectively coordinate the implementation process.
However, not all residents of Seoul were pleased with the new building. The main complaint is its high cost combined with an unclear function. Its cost of 450 million dollars represents 2.4% of the budget of the Korean capital and makes it one of the most expensive projects in the history of the city. At the same time, the total area of 86,500 m2 (which is more than the exhibition area of the Louvre) is still unclear what to occupy, while the maintenance of the building will cost $ 30 million a year.
Of course, this is not the fault of the architect, but of Oh Se Hoon, the predecessor of the current mayor, who wanted to make Seoul the world capital of design (the city bore this honorary title in 2010). The current mayor, Park Won Sung, has promised to host concerts, conferences and trade shows at Dongdaemun Design Plaza, which should cover all costs.
Citizens and experts are outraged by the fact that a frankly modern object appeared in the historical center of the city, and the archaeological objects found during its construction were moved, and not mothballed on the spot: during the royal Joseon dynasty, barracks and parade grounds of elite troops were located here. Others also lament the fate of the stadium, demolished in order to erect the Hadid building in its place: it was the first arena of a modern type in Korea, and over 80 years of its existence, it has become a monument to the history of national sports.
There are indirect claims to Zaha Hadid's project: residents of the city would like to see something more contextual and national in the center, and not just another “iconic” building designed for the increasingly unreliable “Bilbao effect”.
