Firm： HyunjoonYoo Architects

Type： Commercial › Office

STATUS： Built

YEAR： 2013

SIZE： 3000 sqft - 5000 sqft

Photos： Traveler Jihye (27)

A hub for social networking

HUB of Seoul is a place for those who want to start their own business.

The city of Seoul supplies the space, human network, education, and some financial consulting. Many young adults gather here to begin their entrepreneurial projects. The facility is free, thanks to municipal financial support.

Anybody who wants to start their own business can apply for space at this center. Two groups, the Social Business Association and Jobs for Young Adults, supply the office space and free consulting for six months until they can launch their own business. The initiating person starts at the open office area with a couple of members. Once they create a more detailed business plan, the team moves to an individual cell office.

The clients requested space for individual beginners and sound-insulated cell offices for groups further along in their development. In addition, the facility features a restaurant, library, seminar rooms, lecture halls, cafeteria, concert hall, gift shop, head offices, and more.

Create a city

We basically needed to create a small town in a 5,000-square-foot area. We studied the urban structures of Rome and New York; we liked the plazas and river of Rome, and Central Park, the grid structure, and diagonal Broadway of New York.

The first step of the design process was to layout the road network on the huge flat space. The network is composed of the diagonal ‘Broadway,’ plazas, and river. The HUB is a miniature city, while the sound-insulated cell offices are the houses of this city.

More social, more flexible

The client stressed the “flexibility of the space.” They did not know how many or what types of people would use the space and how they would use it, so they wanted maximum flexibility. Our design solution was to create a house with fragmented walls and table with multiple functions. The users can slide the walls and reassemble the table components for their particular needs. As a result, the space is ever changing.

Colors of the space

Our thought was that the architect can only sketch the space, and the users will color it with their activities, which completes the space. HUB reflects this concept really well. After we finished construction, we have visited every month. The coloring of the space began with the rearrangement of the tables, and from the new furniture tenants brought in. All the small decorations on the walls vitalize the atmosphere of HUB.

HUB will grow as the tenants come and go, evolving with the young people that use it.

Team: HyunjoonYoo, Jinsung Huh, Insil Son, Jaehong Park, Moonchul Choi, Sunkeun Hwang, Seungho Ham

Location: 5, Nokbeon-dong, Eunpyung-gu, Seoul, South Korea

Photographers: Youngchae Park, Jihye Choi