A 90-story tower proposed for the Federation of Korean Industries headquarters on Yeouido, Seoul — a fluid, twisting glass form that reimagines the commercial high-rise as a continuous sculptural surface shaped by wind, light, and the digital generation of complex curvature.
Yeouido, Seoul’s principal financial and political district on the Han River, is defined by an orthogonal grid of commercial towers that give the skyline a uniform, planar quality. Asymptote’s proposal for the Federation of Korean Industries headquarters — developed as part of an invited competition — sought to disrupt that regularity with a 90-story form generated through continuous twisting geometry, producing an aerodynamic silhouette that shifts and reshapes itself when viewed from different vantage points across the city.
Tower Form
The tower’s massing departs from the conventional stacked-floor extrusion of commercial high-rise design. Instead, the form is derived from a digitally modulated surface that rotates and tapers as it rises, creating a vertical figure that appears to be in motion — narrowing, swelling, and turning in response to structural forces, wind loads, and solar orientation. The continuous glass curtain wall follows these compound curves without interruption, producing reflections and transparencies that change constantly throughout the day.
Facade and Skin
The facade system is conceived as a seamless envelope of high-performance glazing that wraps the tower’s complex geometry. The curvature of the skin is calibrated to optimize natural light penetration while minimizing solar heat gain across the building’s multiple orientations. The twisting form naturally creates self-shading conditions on the tower’s flanks, reducing the energy demands that plague conventional flat-faced glass towers in Seoul’s extreme seasonal climate.
Urban Context
Sited within the dense urban fabric of Yeouido, the tower’s sculptural profile was intended to establish a new civic marker on the Seoul skyline — a counterpoint to the orthogonal grid of existing commercial towers that define the district. The design extends the logic of Asymptote’s research into digitally derived architecture at an urban scale, applying the formal languages developed in projects like the Velo Towers and FCD Yongsan to the singular challenge of a freestanding supertall structure.
Design Team
The project was designed by Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture with the Asymptote Architecture team.
