The Imprint, Seoul Nightclub Building, Korean Building Development, Architecture Images, Architect

The Imprint at Paradise City in Seoul

Nightclub & Indoor Theme Park Complex in Korea design by MVRDV Architects, The Netherlands

post updated 1 Aug 2020 ; 11 Nov 2019

The Imprint, Paradise City

Design: MVRDV

Location: Seoul, Korea

photograph © Ossip van Duivenbode – The façades of The Imprint are literally a product of their environment; features from the surrounding buildings are projected and imprinted onto the buildings

MVRDV has completed construction on The Imprint, a new 2-building art-entertainment complex in close proximity to Seoul’s Incheon Airport. Featuring a nightclub in one building and indoor theme park in the other, the windowless structures feature three key design elements: imprints of the façade features of surrounding buildings, lifted entrances, and a golden entrance spot covering one corner of the nightclub building.

photo © Ossip van Duivenbode – The 2 buildings of The Imprint are part of the larger Paradise City complex

MVRDV’s The Imprint is part of the larger Paradise City complex of 6 buildings in total, which will provide a full suite of entertainment and hotel attractions less than a kilometre away from South Korea’s largest airport. Given the proposed programme of the 2 buildings – a nightclub and indoor theme park – the client required a design with no windows, yet one that still integrated with the other buildings in the complex. The design of The Imprint therefore arises from a simple question: can we design an expressive façade that connects with its surroundings even though it has no windows?

The design achieves this by projecting the façades of the surrounding buildings in the complex, which are ‘draped’ over the simple building forms and plazas like a shadow, and ‘imprinted’ as a relief pattern onto the façades.

image © Ossip van Duivenbode – A splash of gold at the entrance to the nightclub building will even grab the attention of passengers landing at Incheon Airport

“By placing, as it were, surrounding buildings into the facades of our buildings and in the central plaza, we connect The Imprint with the neighbours,” says Winy Maas, principal and co-founder of MVRDV. “This ensures coherence. Paradise City is not a collection of individual objects such as Las Vegas, but a real city.”

In order to achieve the desired ‘imprint’ of the surrounding buildings, the façade of The Imprint is constructed of glass-fibre reinforced concrete panels. As many of the 3,869 panels are unique, the construction required moulds to be individually produced using MVRDV’s 3D modelling files from the design phase. Once installed, these panels were painted white in order to emphasise the relief in the design.

image © Ossip van Duivenbode – At the entrances to the buildings, the façades are lifted like a theatre curtain

As Winy Maas explains: “Two months ago most of the cladding was done and client said, ‘this is an art piece. What is interesting about that is that they are looking for that momentum—that entertainment can become art or that the building can become artistic in that way. What, then, is the difference between architecture an art? The project plays with that and I think that abstraction is part of it, but it has to surprise, seduce and it has to calm down.”

The entrances, where the façades are lifted like a curtain to reveal mirrored ceilings and glass media floors, exude a sense of the excitement happening inside. “Reflection and theatricality are therefore combined,” concludes Maas. “With our design, after the nightly escapades, a zen-like silence follows during the day, providing an almost literally reflective situation for the after parties. Giorgio de Chirico would have liked to paint it, I think.”

Paradise City in Seoul – Building Information

Architect: MVRDV
Location: Seoul, Republic of Korea

Principal-in-charge: Winy Maas
Partner: Wenchian Shi
Design Team: María López Calleja with Daehee Suk, Xiaoting Chen, Kyosuk Lee, Guang Ruey Tan, Stavros Gargaretas, Mafalda Rangel, and Dong Min Lee
Photography: Ossip van Duivenbode
Copyright: MVRDV 2018 – (Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, Nathalie de Vries)

Partners
Co-Architect: GANSAM Architects & Partners, South Korea
Façade Consultant: VS-A Group Ltd
Panelization Consultant: WITHWORKS
GFRC: Techwall
Lighting: L’Observatoire International

image © Ossip van Duivenbode – In the entrances to the buildings, mirrored ceilings and glass media floors provide an exciting introduction to the entertainment inside