In designing a new 15-story headquarters for international luxury clothier Shinsegae International, the design team sought to create an iconic landmark in the heart of Gangnam-gu, one of Seoul’s largest districts.

The commercial flagship unites more than 500 Shinsegae employees, who were previously spread between several buildings throughout the city. The program includes staff offices, meeting spaces, design studios, a rooftop garden, and ground-level retail space that faces onto a public plaza. The building is visually divided into two portions – the lower portion relates to the lively motion and interaction happening on the street, while the upper portion relates to the larger urban context of the Gangnam-gu neighborhood.

The building’s high-performance façade is a direct response to the client’s desire for a corporate flagship that departs from the look-and-feel of modern commercial buildings. Designed to meet Korea’s progressive energy codes, which are more rigorous than U.S. LEED® standards, the building’s skin integrates a human scale through its gridded exoskeleton, which also functions as an energy performance strategy. Frit patterns on the glass reduce heat gain, while optimizing thermal comfort and maximizing natural daylight year-round.

Movement and materiality are particularly evident within the building’s first four floors where 7 custom 8-foot-diameter steel wheels open and close a series of custom 35-foot-tall external panels that modulate natural daylight. The dynamic ethos of the fashion world is captured in these kinetic components: each time the panels are engaged in a new configuration, the building’s presence is altered anew.