Curving concrete shell encases Paul Smith store by System Lab

Photography is by Yongkwan Kim. Paul Smith’s flagship store in the South Korean capital is housed in a softly curved white shell   punctuated by small circular windows and a bright yellow entrance (+ slideshow). It also includes one basement level, which is the only storey with a rectangular plan. «The shape of the building needed to be inflated as much as it could be,» Kim said. The studio also designed the interior for the second and third floor offices, while the shop floors were designed by the Paul Smith design team. On the other side of the entrance, a garage door opens into an underground car park where up to 14 vehicles can be stacked vertically beneath the shop floor. Project credits:
Architect: Chanjoong Kim (Kyung Hee University) + Taek Hong (System Lab)
Exterior finishing: Exterior wall — Painting on a sphere, Floor — Stone [THK30]
Contractor: Geo Hyun Construction
Interior: Paul Smith + Core Design
Design Team: Kyunam Song, Hyunsoo Park, Younghwan Kim, Youngjin Cho, Chulmin Ahn
Basement floor plan – click for larger imageGround floor plan – click for larger imageFirst floor plan – click for larger imageSecond floor plan – click for larger imageThird floor plan – click for larger imageSection one – click for larger imageSection two – click for larger imageSection three – click for larger image Architecture studio   System Lab   designed the fashion designer   Paul Smith’s   first South Korean store   for a site in Seoul’s densely built Gangnam-gu district, a   popular shopping destination filled with luxury brands. A smattering of circular windows run along the ridge of the sloping roof, lighting upper floor office spaces, and the wooden and concrete stairwell that connects the levels. The curved white facade, made from white reinforced concrete, was cast in carved styrofoam blocks and finished with a semi-gloss paint that covers the joins in the structure. «It was constructed to provide an aggressive gesture towards the road,» said the architect. «We had to create a concrete shell with maximised floor area ratio within the legal regulations by rounding, cutting or connecting all the edges,»   principle architect   Chanjoong Kim   told Dezeen. Related story: Albemarle Street store extension by Paul Smith with 6a Architects
The irregular shape of the building was informed by a number of planning restrictions – building constraints limited the ground-floor plan to 330 square metres, but the client wanted to accommodate larger floors within the upper levels of the building.