A fully mixed-use building with a gallery and garden on the ground floor, offices on the second and third floors, and the owner’s residence on the top floor.
Client
Rainbow Publishing, Hee-Jung Kim
Programme
Offices, gallery, residence: Design
Project Lead
DaeWha Kang Design
Year
2017-2018
Introduction
A fully mixed-use building in Paju Book City, South Korea, Rainbow Publishing House has a gallery and garden on the ground floor, offices on the second and third floors, and the owner’s residence on the top floor. The publishers produce small print run biographies of the ordinary Koreans who built up Korea from one of the poorest countries in the world to what is now a one of the wealthiest and most advanced. They named their company Rainbow with the idea that while individual lives might only be small sparks of light, the story of the many lives that built Korea could together make a brilliant rainbow.
The design challenge
Create dramatic impact of the highest quality within limited means, in a newly master-planned city with stringent code requirements and specific sight lines and view corridors.
The design solution
Given the tight budget, the studio took an architectural approach that creates maximum impact with simple but memorable moves. The design emerges from a powerful visual and storytelling message. Sensitive site disposition makes the most of the surroundings, and timeless materials are used in inventive ways.
The simple block of stone and glass creates a bold visual statement with its clean lines and rich texture. This helps Rainbow Publishing House stand out from the eclectic buildings which surround it. Simplifying the volume and focusing on the quadruple height space of the main circulation stair creates a sense of monumentality and strength. At the same time, subtle use of texture and rhythm adds layers of richness and meaning to otherwise austere forms.
Rainbow Publishing House's key feature is the Hundred-Year Stair. The four-storey high bookshelf has one hundred layers, one for each year of the twentieth century. Each biography is placed on the level of the shelf corresponding to the year of the person’s birth, and a staircase winds its way up around it. In this way, each time someone takes the stairs, they are walking through the life work of the publishing house and also through the history of Korea.
At the same time, giving the main stair beautiful daylight, views, and a strong aesthetic experience encourages everyone to use the stairs rather than the lift, leading to more socialising, more engagement, and better health for all. As recent academic research suggests, climbing five flights of stairs a day is associated with 18% lower mortality, and the studio developed an app that allows users to compete for who climbs more flights each month.
A timeless building
While Rainbow Publishing House has simple volumetrics, the building's siting and orientation responds to a rigorous analysis of the local climate, and embodies the studio’s approach to site planning. Internal flows are carefully choreographed, with residents, office workers, and gallery visitors all considered separately. The hundred-year stair is generated through a simple genetic algorithm that grows from the base to the top, branching out horizontally while reserving space for books in every year. The exterior façade has a similar logic of sedimentary growth, with volcanic stone bricks cut at three different depths creating layers that echo the interior. On the ground level, the building opens in multiple directions and the hundred-year stair anchors the vertical flow. The Hundred-Year Stair faces to the southwest, giving good views to the wetlands and the rest of Paju Book City through a gap in the urban fabric. The long façade faces southeast, towards the best views and abundant but less oppressive light. The long façade also absorbs the winter sun, radiating heat to the garden while blocking the northerly winter wind. Small windows on the north facade minimise heat loss while maintaining cross-ventilation. The façade materials are Hyeon-mu-am volcanic stone, brick, and glass construction, chosen for their durability and variegated textures. The aesthetic evokes the theme of time and history that is central to the architectural concept. The volcanic stone was cut into bricks of different thicknesses, laid to create a layered effect that catches the light in different seasons and different times of day. Interior materials are simple and pure exposed concrete and resin floors, with moments of metal and wood to sharpen and warm the atmosphere.
Client
Rainbow Publishing, Hee-Jung Kim
Location
South Korea
Year
2017-2018
Programme
Offices, gallery, residence: Design
Size
Site area 700 sqm, building area 165sqm, gross floor area 660sqm
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