Seung H-Sang chuckles as he passes a throng of Asian tourists posing for photos on a brightly painted staircase cutting through tiers of old-style, single-storey Korean homes. “This is a landmark of the area – it’s even more packed at the weekend,” says Seung, who is one of South Korea’s leading architects and was recently appointed “city architect” for the country’s sprawling capital.
On a humid summer afternoon in Seoul, Seung, 61, leads the way up to his house in a historic district on Naksan, one of the mountains that looms over the city centre. We had met nearby at his studio, a hulking structure of rusting metal that Seung designed himself. In contrast, he says as we approach the house, he has left the exterior of this simple building exactly as he found it. Built as a family dwelling soon after the 1950-53 Korean war, its whitewashed walls rest on a stone foundation that slopes down to the footpath below.
Seung’s work ranges from a “book city” to house publishing companies near the inter-Korean border, to the Beijing headquarters of the property developer Soho China, and a boutique hotel by the Great Wall of China. There is a striking modernity to the simple shape of his designs, but Seung is vocal about the need to incorporate existing structures wherever possible, and for buildings to fit harmoniously with the surrounding landscape.