Reflect: Building in the Digital Media City, Seoul, Korea

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 board: 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. Reflectdocuments 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.