In October 2015, D Tower, a prime office complex, opened in the center of Gwanghwamun. The building has an impressive exterior design that separates the commercial area that takes up the first five floors from the office area above. JOH directed the overall creative aspects of the D-Tower such as concept, branding, spatial programming, spatial designing, and MD consulting.

I think I should talk about the location, Gwanghwamun. Gwanghwamun is like a ‘dedicated model student’, who is very reliable since having engaged one’s own job seriously, but not as charming as for date or having a drink with. Whereas the place is very crowded in the day time with the office workers, it is vacant at night or on weekends.
There are many office worker costumers as many large office buildings, such as press offices or public institutions, are concentrated. Most of the shops or restaurants are targeting them. Many culinary hot-spots have limited menus such as Kimchi stew, stir-fried octopus or ox-bone soup that are all time best-selling office workers’ lunch menus or beef tripes, grilled pork belly and sushi for office dinner. Not only the Gwanghwamun area, but also other CDB have few places to have decent time after work with acquaintances, family or lovers on weekends.
However, Gwanghwamun area has its strength. It is close to Mt. Inwang and Mt. Bugak, has Gwanghwamun Square or Cheonggyecheon, places for relaxation in the heart of the city, and has culture space such as Sejong Center or the Kyobo Book Centre. Unlike other CDBs, there are extended circulation population who are not office workers.

We found the reasons lay in the typical office buildings.Most of them have a lobby in the first floor and the commercial area that took up the second and the third floor. The lobby separates office workers in the building from outside and excludes the outsiders.
The visitors, tenants, office workers and the landlords have their own needs. For the tenants, the restaurants or shops are more attracted to the place where customers visit at night or on weekends than only at lunch. And the landlords can generate more revenue from the commercial area than from the offices. In the Process of the D Tower planning, we decided to make a different one from existing stereo type office buildings to meet the various needs of visitors, tenants, and office workers.

It would be a building which the customers are attracted to. We wanted D Tower to give distinctive impression from the exterior, and to make people feel curious enough to come inside. So we chose the dynamic exterior ‘as if a giant placed blocks on top of another’. However, we didn’t give up the harmony with surroundings. So the color of D Tower was chosen to be most similar with surrounding buildings. The shape of the building makes people curious, but the building itself is in harmony with the overall impression of the Gwanghwamun.
Of course, people don’t decide to come inside a building just because the exterior has interesting features. What matters is the overall atmosphere, plus the quality of the commercial area. The commercial area of D Tower is called ‘Replace’ which is not just an additional place to the offices, but a core area for outsiders to visit. Replace takes up the first five floors and independent entrances for visitors. This helps to extend the size of circulation population around Gwanghwamun, and to activate business districts near the building.
On entering Replace, visitors can see the whole space at a glance as they take the huge elevator. On the escalator, visitors can see all the restaurants and shops. Unlike existing commercial facilities, the center of the commercial area of Replace is hollow, where the escalator is running through. We selected this for the restaurants and cafés.

At the first glance, the hollow space in the center may seem ineffective, taking up space for more shops. However, the hollow space makes Replace more attractive. In Korea, third floor rent is 30% cheaper than the first or second floor in average commercial facilities. That is, Korean customers don’t bother to move up to the higher floors. Replace has many restaurants and cafes. With the hollow space, shops on the higher floors can secure the view and accessibility.
The indoor terrace gives Replace another charm. We planned that every floor has terrace, which make customers feel like being outdoor with the light through the skylight and the box glass. Koreans love to eat in the outdoor patio as you can see many ‘garden’ restaurants in suburban area with outdoor terraces. But the severe seasonal change as well as the smoke and the yellow dust in the city limit outdoor dining. With the indoor terraces in Replace, customers can enjoy ‘outdoor dining’ all year round, regardless of the weather.
Thanks to the hollow space in the middle, Replace is famous for its view of higher floor, which make visitors more mobile.

Yes. To make the place have more accessibility.
We started from the question ‘what is a different commercial facility from existing Gwanghwamun area?’ and the answer we found lay in the commercial area. We designed ideal building for restaurants and ideal restaurants for the visitors. Gwanghwamun area has many old culinary hot-spots with limited menus. It lacks ‘hot places’ where young office workers, family and young couples want to visit on weekends.
NNow in Replace, customers can enjoy brunch menus in ‘bills’, Chinese dishes in ‘cha ‘R’ and have a casual date in ‘Mad for Garlic’ in daytime or after work. There are ‘On the Border’, a Mexican restaurant which is hard to find in Gwanghwamun, and ‘Hummus Kitchen’ which serves Middle Eastern food. If you bothered to travel to Itaewon for a trendy office dinner, you can now visit ‘Powerplant’ to taste pizza, tacos, and BBQ with craft beer. Replace is a food court consists of multiple restaurant, therefore this can be ideal choice for office dinners or casual get-together. If you are accompanied by a family and children, you can visit ‘Jayeon Byulgok’ a Korean buffet in reasonable price, or ‘Soosa’, a Japanese buffet. If you expect some distinctive, fresh experience, ‘Boy Circus’ would be a right choice.
The most popular, crowded restaurants vary whether it is weekdays or weekends, lunchtime, late afternoon or evening. This is because we put a great emphasis on the customers’ lifestyles and the MD planning had been set on the principle of ‘restaurants that meet the lifestyle of the customers around Gwanghwamun, and special menus that are not common in existing restaurants in Gwanghwamun.’ As a result, restaurants in Replace always seem to be crowded regardless of time, thus make our customers curious about other restaurant they haven’t visited.

Considering the customers’ reason and occasion to stay longer inside the D-Tower, we concluded that Uniqlo was an essential choice. Uniqlo is an easy-to-pick retail store where busy office workers can feel free to visit after spending time in a restaurant or a café. Or, customers who came for purchasing in Uniqlo are expected to visit other restaurants located in D-Tower.
Generally, a customer who shops for fashion items browses several nearby stores before purchasing them. However, having a fashion brand retail store inside the D-Tower is not a good option, since Gwanghwamun has no ‘fashion street’ to enable such ‘comparison purchase’ behavior. Uniqlo has a variety of collection for all ages that ranges from practical, comfortable items such as ‘HeatTec’ and ‘Stretched Jeans’ to formal items suitable for workplace.
‘Benefit Brow Bar’, where you can get a brow trimming service, is crowded on weekends; but the place is also frequented by office workers who manage to make time for brow treatment on weekdays. You’d better make a prior arrangement if you want to get the service on time. Since office workers have not enough time to spare, they tend to get beauty treatment on weekdays rather than spending their precious weekend on it. Weekend visitors tend to visit commercial stores such as Uniqlo and Benefit before they have meal or beverage in somewhere inside the D-Tower.

Pimat-gil, a historical foodie street, had been torn down and replaced by office buildings such as D-Tower, Le Meilleur Jongno, and Gran Seoul. To preserve the heritage of Pimat-gil, these buildings are required by law to include a small path that is surrounded by small eateries. This narrow street has a large floating population who spend much time on the spot. Therefore, pubs and restaurants wouldn’t be good options for the street since they are likely to be empty except mealtimes.
We places small takeaway stands or deli stores around the street and named it a ‘Soho Street’ which means a street filled with small and good stores. The street has ‘Mafia Dessert’, one of the best places for tiramisu, ‘바르다김선생’, for light snacks, and ‘Papa Main’, popular with its premium sweet red-bean pastry. While it is frequented by people who work in nearby office buildings, Soho Street is particularly loved by families or couples spending time around Gwanghwamun.

To emphasize Replace, the commercial zone, D-Tower’s office lobby is moved to the second basement floor while maintaining the essential function of a lobby area, as the entrance and the face of the building. The entrance of the office zone is separated to that of Replace. Riding the escalator down to the second basement floor, you’ll see a two-story-high ceilings of a magnificent lobby area. The high ceiling, grand pillars and lightings make the space full of sunshine.
A lobby is a functional space: it separates inside from outside while it serves as a reception area. Usually, buildings in office town have drop-off zones where you can greet guests or VIPs. In Gwanghwamun, making a drop off zone outside the building is regulated by law due to the busy traffic. However, since D-Tower has put its lobby area in the basement floor, we have a premium, private drop-off zone that restricts any access of outsiders. Thus, D-Tower’s lobby has successfully maintained both the privacy of office and the function as a reception area.

D-Tower is a commercial office building, that is, the office area should be attractive to the potential occupants of the building. In the early stages of planning D-Tower, we had surveyed the ideal space design for offices with companies that are likely to move their offices to Gwanghwamun. Since the result of the survey varied, we felt a need for an eccentric core structure in which the elevators, staircases, and toilets are placed at the recessed part of the floor. The eccentric core structure has no pillar in the office area, therefore gives room for occupants to furnish their offices as they like.
Efficient use of the space was particularly important in Gwanghwamun, the most expensive office town in Seoul. Therefore we made a shared meeting room in the basement floor: in offices, the meeting rooms are not supposed to be used at all times. The occupant companies’ can save rent payment if the meeting rooms are not included in the rentable area of the office.
D-Tower has a spacious women’s bathroom of 5 to 6 partitioned toilet booths, while a women’s bathroom in ordinary office buildings likely to have only 2 or 3 booths. This is because we have considered the high percentage of women employees in offices operating in Gwanghwamun. We made a separate place to brush teeth and wash hands outside the toilet; we understood that a more pleasant environment improves working efficiency.
Most of offices we see nowadays have curtain walls. An office with full natural light was essential to promote work efficiency in the past when most activities inside the office had been paper works; On the contrary, in the contemporary offices workers have to shade the big curtain wall to prevent the sun from reflecting on their computer screens. Instead of curtain walls, the ceilings, floors, and walls in the office area have multiple small windows that are arranged in 3 horizontal rows in the walls of the each floor. They distribute natural light evenly, thus create a better working environment inside the office.

Although it is mainly an office building, now D-Tower is gaining its popularity as a commercial complex. From the early stages of the planning, we had envisioned a place that satisfies more people.
These 9 months have proved our belief: not only among the office workers in nearby offices, D-Tower has become popular among the general visitors who spend their time in Gwanghwamun. Mafia Dessert, a tiramisu bakery located in Soho Street, decided to close their main branch and expand their Soho street shop. Hummus Kitchen gets 2.5 times much profit from the D-Tower branch than from their main restaurant located in Itaewon. The overall sales in Replace restaurants are higher on weekends; considering the fact that the weekends sales in nearby office complex building drop by half, D-Tower’s success is highly encouraging.
We expect D-Tower enjoy prosperity further on, hoping its success leads to positive effects on the overall commercial area around Gwanghwamun.