Hanwha Galleria

Hanwha Galleria reimagines one of Seoul's most recognisable luxury retail addresses, the Galleria department store straddling Apgujeong-ro in Apgujeong-dong, as a pair of crystalline buildings designed by Heatherwick Studio for Hanwha Galleria. The scheme is a tear-down and replacement of the existing East and West wings, substituting twin volumes of roughly 60,000 square metres whose silhouettes taper inward at mid-height like rippled hourglasses, the narrowed necks given over to nature-filled public rooms rather than sales floors. Undulating glass facades, built as a double-layer skin that improves the building's environmental performance, catch and scatter daylight across the street through the day and double as a canvas for art and events after dark, while landscaped plazas at grade, mid-level gardens and planted open rooftops extend the store into publicly accessible ground — a deliberate shift from a sealed luxury box to a place for gathering. Sited at a major crossroads between Gangnam's densest residential blocks and its flagship shopping district, with the Han River framed to the north, the project reads as a pivot point in Seoul's long campaign to re-engage its riverbanks and give Apgujeong a civic room to match its retail pedigree.