If you’re a fan of botanical architecture, this might just be the coolest building ever. Architects Minsuk Cho and Kisu Park of Mass Studies designed this flora-clothed multi-level building to house Belgian fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester’s store in Seoul, South Korea. The building was completed in October 2007 and takes green roofs and living walls to another level, using foliage to cover both the external and internal wall surfaces. We love that it looks as if the building is growing up from underneath the greenery, blurring the lines between plants as ornamentation or structure.
On a site located in an alley near Seoul’s rapidly transforming Gangnam district, the building stands as a green marvel, three floors tall, housing the Ann Demeulemeester shop on the first floor, a restaurant above, and a Multi-Shop in the basement. The designers, Seoul-based Mass Studies Architects, wanted to incorporate as much nature as possible into the building within the constraints of a low-elevation, high-density urban environment.
The building is defined through the convergence of natural and artificial, interior and exterior, rather than demonstrating a stark contrast between the dualities. If you’re wondering what those green species are, it’s primarily a geotextile planted with an herbaceous perennial to form the living walls.
+ Mass Studies Architects
+ Ann Demeulemeester
Via Contemporist
I’m not keen on this sort of thing actually. Looks green, as in the colour, but the huge water and chemical requirements of plants growing in odd places (some in the dark, sometimes hot sometimes cold, vertical beds) are surely not the right way to go about sustainable architecture.