Design side clarifies "Sky Lounge name not related to Dong"
Criticism arises: "French people would laugh"
Building 101 Belleville, Building 102 Monceau, Building 103 Tuileries, Building 104 Floral de Paris, Building 105 Andr? Citro?n, Building 106 Promenade Plant?e….
In the recently released reconstruction design plan for ‘Apgujeong 2 District (Shinhyundai Apartment)’ in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, a large number of French words were used, becoming a subject of ridicule. Online communities shared the apartment’s design plan with comments such as ‘typical vulgar capitalism,’ ‘French people would laugh if they saw this,’ and ‘scary if French people actually see this.’
The reconstruction design plan for Apgujeong 2 District consists of Buildings 101 to 106. The unfamiliar words are accompanied by building numbers in parentheses. All the unfamiliar words are French: ‘Floral de Paris’ and ‘Monceau’ are parks in Paris, France; ‘Andr? Citro?n’ is the founder of the Citro?n automobile company; ‘Tuileries’ is the name of the garden located between the Louvre Museum and the Tuileries Palace. ‘Promenade Plant?e’ means a walkway, and ‘Belleville’ means a beautiful city. The 120,000㎡ (approximately 36,000 pyeong) complex garden is also named in French as ‘Grand Apais?.’
When ridicule and criticism arose asking, “Did they attach French words instead of numbers to the buildings?” the designers explained that these names are not for the buildings themselves but for the sky lounges created in each building. The design of Apgujeong 2 District was undertaken by DA Architecture.
DA Architecture explained, “The design theme for Apgujeong 2 District was borrowed from the Palace of Versailles in France.” The reason for the extensive use of French in this complex is that the initial design concept was based on the Palace of Versailles.
In DA Architecture’s YouTube video, it is explained, “The six sky lounges were curated with motifs from Parisian castles.”
The design also involved Dominique Perrault, a world-renowned French architect. Perrault is famous for designing the French National Library and the Berlin Olympic Velodrome in Germany.
Apgujeong 2 District is a project to rebuild the existing 1,924 households of Shinhyundai Apartments 9, 11, and 12 in Apgujeong-dong 434, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, into approximately 2,700 households. On the 24th of last month, DA Architecture was selected as the design service provider through the regular general meeting of the reconstruction association. The design fee is about 14.4 billion KRW.
The Apgujeong Special Planning Zone includes Districts 2 to 5 among the total Districts 1 to 6 participating in the New Town Planning. Recently, the district revealed a reconstruction draft to transform 13- to 15-story apartments within the district into buildings over 50 stories tall. In this process, it was announced that the mandatory public contribution (donation) ratio would be lowered to 10%, which drew criticism as an excessive privilege. The Seoul Metropolitan Government rebutted, stating, “It is not true that special privileges were given only to specific apartments.”
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