Reflect: Barkow Leibinger Architects Building in the Digital Media City, Seoul, Korea

by Barry Bergdoll, Brett Steele, Frank Barkow

How might an architect design a building whose context hasn't yet been determined? Digital Media City is a new urban quarter in Seoul, zoned to grow up between the airport and the city center. But it's still on the drawing the site for the Barkow Leibinger project documented here was a lone parcel of land diagonally across from a new park. Given their uncertainty about neighboring structures, Frank Barkow and Regine Leibinger equipped theirs with the ability to kaleidoscopically reflect its surroundings--whatever they turn out to be--in a dimensional, folded glass facade. Reflect documents the process of this building's design and construction through texts, photographs and video stills. Work was completed in late 2006; the result is a versatile face in the midst of facelessness.

128 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2007

About the author

Barry Bergdoll is professor of architectural history in the department of art history and archaeology at Columbia University and the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.