The building, designed by Cho and Partners, is structured through the layering of floor levels with varying orientations and angles. This arrangement—complemented by a cantilever of over three meters on the second floor—creates variations in depth, shadow, and the relationships between the building’s different planes.
In terms of materiality, a reinforced concrete structure supports a volume clad in elongated, reddish-toned bricks—a nod to the brick structures found in the surrounding area. The combination of the rotation of the floor plans and the cantilever of the second level defines both the volumetric configuration and the way shadows play across the cladding.
deDear Manri by Cho and Partners. Photograph by Geunho Jung.
Project description by Cho and Partners
A building that receives the path from two directions
At the top of a hill linking Manri-dong and Cheongpa-dong, a curving road brings people from two directions onto a single plot. deDear Manri was built here by Cho and Partners as the studio's own office. On one side rise the towers around Seoullo 7017 and Seoul Station; on the other, the sewing workshops and low-rise buildings that lead towards Cheongpa-dong. The design began with connecting these different urban scales and directions of walking.
Each floor is set at a different angle, so the form twists as it rises. The building receives people approaching from both directions, and reveals itself little by little as one climbs the hill. Rather than describing the building through a single front seen from one point, the design took as its measure the changing relationship of faces and volumes as one moves along the curving road.
The second-floor slab cantilevers more than three metres, a part classed as a special structure under Korean building regulations. It creates a difference in depth between the lower and upper parts of the building. Working together, the rotation of the floors and the projection change the overlapping faces and the shadows between them according to where one stands.
The exterior is clad in red long brick. It follows the image of the brick buildings around it, while the long, low units and horizontal joints emphasise the horizontal line. Walls facing different directions are tied together by the same material and the repetition of its joints. Up close, the texture of the brick and its small variations in colour come forward; from a distance, the repeated lines read as a single surface.
Movement continues from the alley onto an external stair. Starting at ground level, it climbs to the third floor; there one enters the building and continues by an internal stair up to the fifth floor. Passing from outside to inside in sequence turns the act of entering into a series of stages, and the walk through the alley carries on into the building at changing heights.
On the way up, each floor presents a space with its own character, so that the differences between them are experienced along a single route. Outside, the direction shifts from floor to floor; inside, the spaces change along the path. deDear Manri joins the road between two neighbourhoods and the movement between floors into one continuous flow.
