Seoul Opera House

The Seoul Opera House will be placed on an island in the middle of Hangang river connected by two bridges.

Very consciously, Nox Architects considered the building as an image, because it is mostly seen from afar.

Since Seoul is such a city of mountains - the landmarks are neutral in Seoul- they based their image on the idea of the viewing-stone, in this case the Yunsanseok, the multi-peaked mountain range stone.

Instead of simply 'building the image', they used Gaudi's catenary technique of the hanging model: flexible surfaces suspended from the structural nodes in the typology of an opera house and a concert hall.

This generates a highly variable configuration, where most peaks develop vertically (at its highest some 75m) and some horizontally.

The skin varies from highly reflective to fully transparent according to the curvature.

With the loose skin they create a public landscape between both volumes and a peak-experience with a platform on top where people can have a spectacular view of Seoul.

All infrastructural and logistic connections are placed under the huge deck of the island.

From the highway - which they wrapped in a transparent structure to stop the noise from disturbing the quietness of the park - one enters multi-level parking, a specially created underground loop that gives