Incheon City announced on the 2nd that it will hold an international competition to prepare the design plan for the new city hall building, scheduled for completion in 2027.
The competition will be conducted as a general design competition and international bidding, open to architects both domestic and abroad. Architects who only hold foreign architectural licenses must participate jointly with domestic architects.
Participants must register through the city’s website or by visiting in person from the 10th to the 17th of this month, and submit their competition entries by May 30. The city plans to announce the final winning design on June 19 after technical evaluations and two rounds of final judging.
The judging committee will be composed of eight final judges (including one alternate) and eight technical judges, selected by public lottery from recommended candidates according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport’s "Architectural Design Competition Operation Guidelines."
The final winner will be granted the rights for basic and detailed design, while the remaining awardees will share a total prize money of up to 100 million KRW.
Based on the design plan, Incheon City intends to build a new city hall on the site of the city hall sports ground, with a total floor area of 80,417㎡ and a construction cost of 211.7 billion KRW.
The design service will commence in July, and administrative procedures such as traffic impact assessments and value engineering (VE) will be conducted from the second half of 2023, with construction scheduled to begin in March 2025. Completion is targeted for December 2027.
The current Incheon City Hall was completed in 1985 and has been in use for 37 years. Due to population growth and administrative district expansion, administrative demand has increased significantly, and as the number of public officials has grown, office space has become insufficient, leading to the purchase of nearby buildings.
However, some departments still operate in leased buildings, resulting in reduced work efficiency and ongoing citizen inconvenience due to insufficient facilities such as elevators and parking lots.
Above the underground parking lot of the new city hall, a rest area, walking paths, and plazas will be created to make it a complex building where administration and culture coexist. Additionally, the existing main building and civil service building will be remodeled for use as citizen convenience facilities, performance halls, book cafes, exhibition rooms, and archives.
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