Scraping the Sky Locally
The government will begin to localize design technologies for skyscrapers such as the 555-meter-tall Second Lotte World, the 305-meter-tall Northeast Asia Trade Center, and 411-meter-tall Haeundae L City, by 2020.
According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement on Oct. 26, the government will carry out a project to develop skyscraper design technologies that can compete with those of world-class design companies by investing a total of 20 billion won (US$17.7 million) for five years from Dec. to June.
According to current construction Law, skyscrapers are buildings which have 50 or more floors above ground and are 200 meters tall or taller. At the moment, the tallest building in Korea is 68-story and 305-meter-tall Songdo Northeast Asia Trade Center completed in July of last year.
In Dec. next year, Seoul’s Songpa-gu will see the completion of the 123-story and 555-meter-tall Second Lotte World. The Second Lotte World will be followed by the Global Business Center (105 floors above ground and 526 meters tall) of the Hyundai Motor Group in Samseong-dong in Seoul, and Haeundae L City (101 floors above ground and 411 meters tall).
Like them, skyscrapers with 100 or more floors will be built soon in Korea to rival famous skyscrapers abroad. But core technologies are provided not by Korean companies but by Korn Pederson Fox (KPF) and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM).
KPF designed the Songdo Northeast Asia Trade Center, which is the tallest now, the 2nd Lotte World that will be the tallest building in Korea when it is finished, Seocho Samsung Town, Prudential Life Insurance Building, Dongbu Financial Center, and Posteel Building. The Shanghai International Financial Center (472 meters tall, 101 floors above ground), World Bank Headquarters, IBM World Headquarters, and USA Today Headquarters are also the other brainchildren of the KPF.
SCM designed Haeundae L City, Tower Palace, the 63 Building, ASEM Tower, GS Gangnam Tower, and COEX Intercontinental Hotel among others. The company also fashioned the design of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, which Samsung C&T erected.
Moreover, the two companies are competing to receive an order to build the Global Business Center from the Hyundai Motor Group. So it is highly likely that one of the two will design the new edifice for the Hyundai Motor Group.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport aims at developing design technology that can catch up with the world’s advanced technology and even take the lead in the world market and engineering technology that can work out well with the design technology by 2020.
So they decided to develop core technologies for building skyscrapers for companies and overseas construction markets, innovative and original technologies for skyscrapers, and global support infrastructure models for skyscrapers.
Other objectives of the ministry are to secure technologies to optimally design the structures and exteriors of big and atypical skyscrapers by way of computers, to control vibrations of buildings via highly advanced sensors, system formwork, and lifting technologies that can speed up construction work and cut down on cost.