Gwanggyo Power Centre
MVRDV

Image courtesy MVRDV

MVRDV recently won the concept design competition for a dense city centre for the future new town of Gwanggyo, 35 kilometers south of the Korean capital Seoul. The site is surrounded by a beautiful lake and forested hills.

The plan consists of a series of overgrown hill shaped buildings with great programmatic diversity, aiming for high urban density and encouragement of further developments around this so-called "Power Centre," one of the envisioned two centers of the future new town.

A landscape on top of the new program will enlarge the green qualities and link to the surrounding parks.

Image courtesy MVRDV

Since the beginning of the millennium local nodes with a high density concentration of mixed program are used in Korean town planning. These nodes consist of a mix of public, retail, culture, housing, offices and leisure generating life in new metropolitan areas, and encouraging further developments around them.

This divers program has different needs for phasing, positioning and size. To facilitate this all elements are designed as rings. By pushing these rings outwards, every part of the program receives a terrace for outdoor life. Plantations around the terraces with a floor to floor circulation system store water and irrigate the plants.


Image courtesy MVRDV

Image courtesy MVRDV

The roofs of these hills and the terraces are planted with box hedges creating a strong, recognizable, cohesive park. This vertical park will improve the climate and ventilation, reduce energy and water usage. As a result a series of overgrown green "hills" appear in the landscape.

The shifting of the floors causes as a counter effect hollow cores that form large atriums. They serve as lobbies for the housing and offices, plazas for the shopping center and halls for the museum and leisure functions. In each tower a number of voids connect to the atrium providing for light and ventilation and creating semi-public spaces.


Image courtesy MVRDV

Image courtesy MVRDV

On the lower floors the atriums are connected through a series of public spaces on various levels linking the towers and serving the outdoor facilities of the culture, retail and leisure program. The Power Centre creates a dense urban program with a green regard.

The final project will be a self sufficient city of 77,000 inhabitants.


Drawing courtesy MVRDVSchematic Overview Combination

Drawing courtesy MVRDVSection

Model photo courtesy MVRDVMountains

Model photo courtesy MVRDV

Photo courtesy MVRDVForming Shape