AmorePacific Headquarters, South Korea

With a gross floor area of 216,000m2, the new headquarters for Amorepacific, the Korea’s largest beauty and cosmetic company, is located in the centre of Seoul at a site that has been occupied by the company since 1956. It is located next to the spacious public Yongsan Park and a business district, which was part of a masterplan representing the largest high-rise development in Korea that substantially altered the urban fabric of the Yongsan district. Open to all sides, the ground level leads straight into the heart of the building. The atrium is not only the central arrival zone but also the main event space for art installations, concerts, lectures and other cultural activities, with a variety of public facilities such as a museum, a library, a tea room and retail, defining its perimeter. On the upper levels, the corporate presence is more perceptible, with office and CEO floor, an entire Conference Centre floor, the VIP floor and labs floor. The main attraction of the building is the auditorium, laid as an amphitheater facing the park through a 30m glass front wall, adjustable in size, end use and acoustic performance by deploying different type and layers of curtains. Still on the ground floor, additional corporate amenities such as staff restaurants, cafés, fitness and health facilities are included. The acoustic scope supported the variety of spaces and end uses to allow for the client to use the building as per their need and desire. The building envelope sound insulation has been designed to control noise ingress from the external environment but still allowing for a natural ventilation system which together with shading and underfloor air conditioning is part of the low carbon approach which is a real departure from conventional Korean commercial office solutions. The internal sound insulation has been designed both to control noise transfer between spaces but also to ensure a very good level of speech privacy especially in high end spaces such as those included in the CEO, VIP and Conference Centre floors. By working together with the architects, the architectural finishes as well as the shapes and dimensions of the different areas have been designed to achieve a suitable room acoustics within the spaces ensuring flexibility, the request versatile end use of the rooms and the performance of various type of events. Lastly, the control of building services noise has been carried out to achieve the requested background noise in the spaces to ensure speech privacy but also a good level of comfort.