Gwanggyo Galleria
Retail Interiors, Seoul, South Korea
OMA with Chris van Duijn, Patrizia Zobernig, Tomaso Bernabo, Felicia Gambino
Completed 2020
Opened in February 2020, Galleria is a unique luxury department store in Seoul designed by OMA. The building’s design recognizes the market requirement for a profitable department store to consist of primarily leasible rectangular retail plates, and leverages this cubic inevitability with a spectacular “Loop” that straddles the building facade, offering moments of interruption to the typical floorplate with spaces for pop up retail and cultural programs.
Within the retail floor plate is another exceptional element of the building, the stacked “void tower.” I worked on the retail interiors, with a focus on the “void tower,” the vertical experience traveling up the center of the store. While the majority of each floor is a typical shop island layout, the area surrounding the escalators on each level features a unique design strategy for material, display and lighting, lending a corresponding ambience for the type of retail on that level.
