YG Headquarters

The South Korean music scene, otherwise known as K-Pop, is currently making huge strides in the global music industry. Popular with fans from Asia to the Americas, South Korean bands are currently topping the charts and selling out stadiums. With its fingers on the cultural pulse and a social-media-savvy fandom, K-pop is currently taking the world by storm.

In 2017 YG Entertainment, the producers of K-Pop invited UNStudio to design their brand new headquarter building in Seoul, which since completion has become a site of pilgrimage for fans hoping to catch a glimpse of their latest idols.

The new building houses office spaces, meeting rooms, and recording studios, all of which are strategically organized to take full advantage of the location and to provide YG Entertainment’s employees with the most uplifting and inspiring work environment possible.

The new HQ is located on a site that borders two very different worlds. On one side, it abuts a low-density housing area, while on the other, it faces a dense network of highways and bridges and overlooks a large green park.

This discrepant positioning informs the design, the building orientation, and the internal organization, while also serving to open up views towards the river from the interior workplaces.

The new HQ interior takes the opposite approach, introducing instead a brightly lit space with a range of white tones and geometric lines. The dual qualities of the surroundings are reflected in the interior organization of the building through an interlocking sectional concept for the functions.

This logic, combined with visual coherence in materials and geometry, creates a unique interior experience that is visually linked to the exterior street level, while the roof floods the central atrium space with daylight.

The seven office levels are oriented towards the view of the park, a placement that ensures daylight on all working floors.

This area acts as a central stage for the lower level offices and the recording studios, as well as for the users, staff, and visitors.

The interior facade of the atrium is punctuated by exposed capsule-like meeting rooms that can serve as either ‘working zones’ or ‘resting zones’. These capsules further enable visual interaction throughout the atrium and towards the office floors.

The existing YG Building next to the new HQ is characterized by its exposed concrete exterior.

The massing of the new YG Headquarter building further reflects this duality through interlocking the protective shell-like exterior facade with the more human-scale materiality of the interior.

Fully glazed areas are located towards the park and the central zone on this side of the building is equipped with balconies. These enable outside spaces for the users during work breaks, while also providing sun shading for the levels below. BIPV solar cells are also integrated into the south-facing facade and on the roof. Semi-glazed zones are allocated in the transition towards the fully opaque facade.

In some of these solid areas, especially those located towards the housing area, dynamic lines are used to highlight certain zones, while a perforation pattern and alternation of aluminum panels and glass provide a glimpse of the functions and activities inside the building. The integration of planting functions as an extension of the nearby park, while also forming a distinct contrast with the metallic exterior of the building. On the ground level, the green extends towards the inside of the building.