Prooni Publishing Company & Book Café (renovation project)

To overcome conventional type & stacking

A building type called ‘Neighboring Convenience Facilities’ is prevalent in Korea. It is comprised of 4 to 5 storey building with commercial facilities on the ground and above, and residence on top. It serves as a little hub in residential district. Described as ‘Mujigae Tteok’ (Stacked cake) by Korean architect ‘Hwang Do Jin’, the functions are usually stacked on one another, lacking connection to the ground. The upper floors are only accessible through core stair/elevators. This phenomenon also occurs from the reality that buildings are built without assigned tenants. But architectural possibilities still exist through diversification of circulation and sectional design.

Originally a 3 storey building with one single dull core, all exterior materials are stripped for renovation. Instead of placing Book café on ground floor and Publishing Company on second floor, both floors are cut in half and two new stairs are placed for separate circulation. Another new stair from ground floor to basement solves problem of circulation to the underground library from publishing quarter. One slab is also taken out from the café for spatial connectivity. New entryway to the residence is designed with newly installed elevator. The residence has two decks on both sides on 3rd floor, and a another deck with north-west view to the mountain on 4th floor. Two ventilation / lighting well are carved into the basement with automated skylight.

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Influence

Two glass-block projects affected the elevation. One being Maison de Verre (1932) by Pierre Chareau, Another Maison Hermès (2006) by Renzo Piano. Projects apart by more than 70 years, they introduced a new sensibility to the glass-blocks. In terms of planning, Samteo Building (1979) by Kim Su Geun and Daehakro Culture Space (1999) by Seung Hchioh-Sang affected the building, both building freeing vertical circulation from the core.

The elevation: Bright silence

In the beginning, the client was looking for other land for a while because of the heavy feeling about the situation around the site. Surrounding conditions - multi-family housing, various types of business, the underdeveloped buildings were perceived to be undesirable for the emotional and sensitive client and employees who run the publishing house, and there was a lot of stress from this. The way these buildings and surrounding areas corresponded, and the connection between the exterior space of the house and the surrounding area became an issue. On the other hand, there was the issue of how to express the program which is composed of three functions in a complex manner; to express or to abstain and if to express, how.

So the materials chosen were glass blocks and bricks. Initially, glass blocks were designed around the decks of the houses and the boundaries of the house decks and railings, but they were extended to the exterior to distinguish commercial café and office. The glass block was chosen as a material that simultaneously leads to visual blockage while allowing partial visual connectivity and lighting. In contrast to the transparency and sharpness of the glass block, the office exterior was designed with a rectangular brick that emphasizes the same lamination. On the other hand, the residential was thought of as an intermediate form of disappearance and revealing, resulting in a mass protruding to one side. Initially, decorative elements that function as eaves existed between the glass block and the brick boundary, but were discarded due to legal complication.

In order to avoid the repetitive and minimal mechanical sensibility of the glass block, various patterns were experimented with several kinds of blocks and then were applied. The glass block is very transparent at night, revealing the depth of the space to the outside, but the reflection is high at daytime, and it is a little blunt. This pattern lowers the degree of this bluntness and gives a human scale. Also, the degree of light projected and the reflectivity vary depending on the type of glass block, which lets in different light making an interior worth a visit.

As a result, the division of the program through was expressed through three different exterior materials, and the residential seemed to be hidden, but when viewed carefully, it reveals its existence.