HYUNDAI SONGPA
Suh Architects
LOCATION
Songpa-gu, Seoul, South Korea
CATEGORY
Commercial › Office Retail Showroom
Hyundai Songpa Dealership wears its craftsmanship within and without. The four-story envelope of carefully calibrated layers of stainless steel mesh represent the underlying grid and meticulous assembly required to produce a single driving machine.
Like the many intricate auto parts precisely coordinated to create a single vehicle, 2,100 stainless customized connector clips hold together the five layers of metal screens that hover over the concrete building surface.
This shimmering facade seems to float over the building’s concrete surface, creating a breathing metallic layer whose skin alters with the ever-changing light.
On closer inspection, it is a simple concept of aligning and anchoring weatherproof grid layers seamlessly across the entire surface of the building.
The exterior’s texture continues within the building's interior as well to create a complete, visceral experience.
A floating grid datum wrapping the building’s exterior folds to persist horizontally and define the whole volume in a single layered language.
Brushed, cold-rolled metallic panels and concrete floors combine with the transparency of glass and reflectivity of the buffed automobile contours to create a light yet weighty, refined yet raw palette.
As one travels upward, the signature metallic mesh grid extends suspended across all ceilings.
The firm’s mounted metallic graphics guide the visitor up from the ground floor showroom, up the stairs flanked by solid steel grids, leading to material sample displays and a spectrum of Hyundai’s models.
Ultimately the visitor arrives at an urban roof terrace that offers a framed sky with seating in greenery. This full-floor retail experience thus uses a layered metallic grid to dress Hyundai’s new showroom in a metallic craftsmanship that is both ephemeral and massive at once.