Dutch architecture firm MVRDV, together with the local Studio GANSAM Architects & Partners has designed the complex.

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.
 

Description of project by MVRDV

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.

“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.

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."

Read more
Read less

More information

Label
Architects
Text
MVRDV. Principal-in-charge.- Winy Maas. Partner.- Wenchian Shi
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Design Team
Text
María López Calleja with Daehee Suk, Xiaoting Chen, Kyosuk Lee, Guang Ruey Tan, Stavros Gargaretas, Mafalda Rangel, and Dong Min Lee
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Partners
Text
Co-Architect.- GANSAM Architects & Partners, South Korea
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Collaborators
Text
Façade Consultant.- VS-A Group Ltd
Panelization Consultant.- WITHWORKS
GFRC.- Techwall
Lighting.- L’Observatoire International
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.
Label
Copyright
Text
MVRDV 2018 – (Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, Nathalie de Vries)
+ + copy Created with Sketch.
- + copy Created with Sketch.

MVRDV was founded in 1993 by Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The practice engages globally in providing solutions to contemporary architectural and urban issues. A highly collaborative, research-based design method involves clients, stakeholders and experts from a wide range of fields from early on in the creative process. The results are exemplary, outspoken projects, which enable our cities and landscapes to develop towards a better future.

The products of MVRDV’s unique approach to design vary, ranging from buildings of all types and sizes, to urban plans and visions, numerous publications, installations and exhibitions. Built projects include the Netherlands Pavilion for the World EXPO 2000 in Hannover; the Market Hall, a combination of housing and retail in Rotterdam; the Pushed Slab, a sustainable office building in Paris’ first eco-district; Flight Forum, an innovative business park in Eindhoven; the Silodam Housing complex in Amsterdam; the Matsudai Cultural Centre in Japan; the Unterföhring office campus near Munich; the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam; the Ypenburg housing and urban plan in The Hague; the Didden Village rooftop housing extension in Rotterdam; the music centre De Effenaar in Eindhoven; the Gyre boutique shopping center in Tokyo; a public library in Spijkenisse; an international bank headquarters in Oslo, Norway; and the iconic Mirador and Celosia housing in Madrid.

Current projects include a variety of housing projects in the Netherlands, France, China, India, and other countries; a community centre in Copenhagen and a cultural complex in Roskilde, Denmark, a public art depot in Rotterdam, the transformation of a mixed use building in central Paris, an office complex in Shanghai, and a commercial centre in Beijing, and the renovation of an office building in Hong Kong. MVRDV is also working on large scale urban masterplans in Bordeaux and Caen, France and the masterplan for an eco-city in Logroño, Spain. Larger scale visions for the future of greater Paris, greater Oslo, and the doubling in size of the Dutch new town Almere are also in development.

MVRDV first published a manifesto of its work and ideas in FARMAX (1998), followed by MetaCity/Datatown (1999), Costa Iberica (2000), Regionmaker (2002), 5 Minutes City (2003), KM3 (2005), Spacefighter (2007) and Skycar City (2007), and more recently The Vertical Village (with The Why Factory, 2012) and the firm’s first monograph of built works MVRDV Buildings (2013). MVRDV deals with issues ranging from global sustainability in large scale studies such as Pig City, to small, pragmatic architectural solutions for devastated areas such as New Orleans.

The work of MVRDV is exhibited and published worldwide and has received numerous international awards. One hundred architects, designers and urbanists develop projects in a multi-disciplinary, collaborative design process which involves rigorous technical and creative investigation. MVRDV works with BIM and has official in-house BREEAM and LEED assessors.

Together with Delft University of Technology, MVRDV runs The Why Factory, an independent think tank and research institute providing an agenda for architecture and urbanism by envisioning the city of the future.

Read more
Published on: September 22, 2018
Cite: "MVRDV Completes The Imprint at Paradise City, a White-and-Gold Art-Entertainment Complex in Incheon" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/mvrdv-completes-imprint-paradise-city-a-white-and-gold-art-entertainment-complex-incheon> ISSN 1139-6415
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...