Is POSCO the Key Contributor to the Architectural Design of Seoul's New Landmark 'Seoul Botanical Garden'?

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Yoon-joo] Seoul Botanic Park, which officially opened last May, attracted attention for its architectural design even before its opening. In particular, the greenhouse design of Seokul Botanic Park, which has emerged as a new landmark, is drawing attention, and the key contributor is POSCO's architectural steel brand 'INNOVILT'.

The greenhouse at Seoul Botanic Park has a bowl shape with a concave crown and edges that rise around it. It is not the commonly thought dome shape. The reason Seoul Botanic Park adopted this design is to utilize the space as a whole. Dome-shaped greenhouses generally place rare and large plants in the center, which limits space utilization.

Although greenhouses are often thought of as glass buildings, they are essentially steel frame structures. Constructing a large-scale building with a diameter of 100m and a height of 28m entirely out of glass depends on how steel materials are used. In the case of Seoul Botanic Park, this massive glass building is supported from the outside by 10 white steel frames.

According to POSCO, Kim Chan-jung, chief architect at The System Lab who was in charge of the design, wanted to focus attention only on the main structural steel columns and make other elements less noticeable. This intention can be seen when looking at the greenhouse’s outer wall, which visitors encounter closer than the white columns. The building is composed of polygons formed by repeating and intersecting triangles and inverted triangles, but they do not stand out. To perfectly realize the rounded outer wall with 3,180 triangular windows, the sizes and shapes vary slightly, and some are operable to aid ventilation.

The key enabler of this design is POSCO INNOVILT products. Using PoSPACEs, one of the INNOVILT lineup, it was possible to create a large-scale, irregular curtain wall that was difficult with conventional materials. The ball-type PoSPACEs, which extend in multiple directions from the center, were applied to the entire glass outer wall, and lightweight, high-strength steel HSA was used to express a light feeling. As a result, a futuristic irregular greenhouse space rarely seen anywhere else was born.

Meanwhile, INNOVILT is a premium construction material brand launched by POSCO last year to lead the future construction market. Through 'INNOVILT,' POSCO plans to maximize the synergy between steel and architecture.