Integrated Research & Development Center

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Integrated Research & Development Center

Type

Industrial › Research Facility

The competition was to design an Integrated Research & Development Center for a Korea-based consumer products company. Our design premise was that the community is paramount: its relationship to the individual, institution, and the city can create a meaningful space. Accordingly, the form of the building itself creates a common central space, a shared attribute for the occupants and larger community. Its central, four-level garden is an activity zone where both people and science are on display: a theatre of creativity activated by the dynamic nature of the client's brand, and a direct symbolic reference to its history in the food industry.
The site lies between a green belt of native forest and agricultural fields to the north and east, and an active downtown to the south and southwest. In the site's natural condition, the existing hillside had gradually sloped into the property over about 30 meters of elevation. Subsequent intervention had then created a steep cliff face as the physical northern backdrop to the new development, presenting a challenge and an opportunity to utilize the site's southern exposure in the embrace of this abrupt topographical transition. Presenting a substantial image to the highway, the building opens up to a welcoming entrance court, a gesture to the local community. In the entrance court at the south-facing front of the building, a water feature provides for a variety of social activities, and represents architecture’s re-creation of the land that it occupies.
Vertically, the building is tripartite: The base contains the building entrance and common functions; The middle, or plinth, contains the cafeteria; and the top is the research tower. These three elements are pinned through a series of collaboration/circulation zones between floors, providing a controlled source of natural light into the heart of the building, and continuing the reminder of man's relationship to nature, begun by the multi-level garden below.