HORTITECTURE The Power of Architecture and Plants

GWANGGYO
POWER CENTER
SEOUL, 2008
MVRDV emerged as the winner of a developer competition
in 2008 with its plan for a dense city within the future
city of Gwanggyo, 35 kilometers south of the Korean
capital Seoul. The concept envisages a series of buildings
of different uses, which formally refer to a green,
Korean hillside landscape. The so-called “Power Center”
of the new city was designed to achieve programmatic
diversity within urban density accompanied by a demand
for sustainability.
“To our surprise this made it into TIME magazine as one of
the most green buildings. We were never really aiming for
that, and some of the people started to say ‘hey, but these
guys are just greenwashers’. You know, they just put some
plants on the buildings to make it look more sustainable.”
49