Competition at the city hall in Seoul

Last week, the winner of the international competition for the design of a new city hall in Seoul, South Korea (a metropolis with more residents than the entire Czech Republic), was announced. The winning firm is the architectural office Kaplan McLaughlin Diaz from San Francisco. The 21-story building, with an elliptical floor plan, is divided into two parts by a vertical gap, which is meant to symbolize "the openness of government." An atrium with a garden will be created between the two sections of the divided ellipse. The existing city hall, built by the Japanese during their occupation in the 1930s, is now a protected monument, and the construction of the new city hall will avoid it. Info>