SK CORPORATION R & D COMPLEX, Daeduk, 1989-92

 

Scope     Master Plan and Schematic Building Design: Jusuck Koh (Project Director) in

                 collaboration with Junglim Architects (prime consultant)

                 Ecological Site Engineering and Landscape Design: Oikos,

                 Construction Supervision: Oikos and Junglim Architects

Client      SK Corporation

 

 

SK Corporation, Korea's largest Petrochemical Energy Company, requested a world-class R&D Center.

 

The R&D Complex consists of state-of-the art laboratory buildings of standard modules and interstitial utilities floors, administration and cafeteria buildings. An architectural street serves as communication corridor and unifying connector, lending grandness to the group of small buildings. Courtyards between laboratory buildings are designed each with a distinctive motive to give address and richness to laboratory monotony.

 

The site was originally a rice paddy valley with pear orchards on the side slopes, all erased by civil engineering works during site preparation for development. The old creek and pond system was reintroduced, and created opportunity for diverse water-related planting zones and pipeless stormwater management. Shallow water terraces proposed in front of the complex reverberate old landscape images. Reserve areas for future building expansion are covered with flowering meadows. Orchard parking lots shaded by flowering, heat-tolerant lowland trees flank the sides of the valley, forming a three-dimensional transition to the cut slopes reforested in two phases.

 

Juxtaposed against the grid-designed laboratories, administration and cafeteria buildings possess curved forms to relate to the surrounding landscape and water channel. Grid and curved lines together symbolize the fusion of logic and emotion, necessary for human creativity. The courtyard schemes symbolize Matisse (Emotion, Energy of Movement), "Mondrian" (Logic, Chemicals for Color), and "Korean Stone Garden" with orchard layout of found stones. Spring and water channel connecting to the water cascade near the interaction lounge symbolize the 'Spring of Scientific Discovery'.