Confronting the City: Remodeling a Multi-Family Building into a Shared Office

The Archetype of Multi-Family Housing
The Ichon-dong Shared Office Project is situated adjacent to the western edge of the Yongsan International Business District, an area poised for large-scale redevelopment. The client, a publisher, aimed to transform two existing multi-family residential buildings, comprising a total of 29 units, into a shared office space centered around reading culture. These original structures typify the "floor area ratio game" prevalent in small-scale urban architecture, characterized by maximized volumes and ground levels dominated by pilotis parking, leaving little breathing room.

A City of Serendipitous Encounters
The buildings were originally designed with a rigid frame structure for the lower levels housing parking and commercial facilities, and a bearing wall structure for the upper residential units. The walls separating the rooms serve as primary structural elements, making the sequence of small rooms a fixed condition. The challenge was to repurpose this spatial characteristic to suit the new function of a shared office. Each room was converted into an individual workspace, while the connecting living rooms and corridors were reimagined as communal areas—shared kitchens, meeting rooms, benches, and bookshelves—mirroring the role of urban streets. Structural walls that once delineated separate units were partially opened through reinforcement, allowing rooms on the same floor to interconnect and form cohesive shared office zones. The irregular arrangement of structural walls resulted in a complex, meandering circulation reminiscent of a maze. By intentionally preserving this original layout, the design fosters a network of interconnected rooms, facilitating spontaneous interactions akin to those found in a city.

Crafting the Urban Facade
When repurposing multi-family housing, the "expanded balconies" often incorporated into the building's floor area become valuable design elements. To convert the building for commercial use, these enclosed balconies must be restored to their original state. By subtracting these volumes, the building begins to engage with the city, shedding its monolithic mass. Moreover, transforming each room into a private office enhances the utility of these reopened balconies, providing transitional spaces that blend work, rest, and contemplation within the shared office environment.

The prevalent practice of balcony expansion in urban housing has eroded the depth of building facades, severing the connection between interior life and the city's landscape. In the Ichon-dong Shared Office, restoring the balconies offered an opportunity to revive the building's urban expression.

To align with the building's new function, the required number of parking spaces was minimized, reclaiming ground-level space previously dominated by pilotis parking. A stair plaza was introduced between the two buildings, linking the shared office entrances to the street, and a small garden was created within the site to serve as a communal space for both office workers and local residents.

The Ichon-dong Shared Office Project dismantled the rigid boundaries inherent in typical multi-family housing. Internally, it established a "city of rooms," while externally, it introduced modest interventions aimed at enriching the everyday urban landscape.