See Architects Stacks Concrete Slabs and Gradient Glass to Animate a Gangnam Corner at Night

Gangnam's commercial corridors tend to announce themselves loudly, but the residential alleys threaded between them operate at a much quieter register. Nonhyun 169, a four-story commercial building by See Architects and lead architect Kee Lew, sits precisely at that boundary, forced to address two very different street conditions at once. The result is a building that reads differently depending on where you stand and what time of day it is: solid and civic from the alley side, layered and luminous from the commercial street, and genuinely theatrical after dark.

What makes the project worth studying is how much spatial ambition the architects extract from a constrained envelope. First-class residential zoning imposes strict height and floor-area limits here, giving the design team a smaller FAR than neighboring commercial blocks. Rather than accept a modest presence, See Architects added an extra concrete plane at the top that conceals a double-height interior space, making the building read as five stories from the street while remaining a four-story structure in plan. It is a disciplined sleight of hand, and it sets the tone for a project built on controlled illusion.

The Layered Facade

The primary facade is a stack of cantilevered concrete slabs, each slightly angled, with gradient-printed glass set back behind them. The slabs project far enough to function as sunshades but their real purpose is visual depth. Seen head-on, the building presents a neat vertical rhythm. From an oblique angle along the street, the slabs overlap and create a dense horizontal layering that makes the facade feel much thicker than it is. The gradient print on the glass reinforces this: opaque at certain heights to shield against overlooking the nearby residential buildings, translucent elsewhere to let light and activity bleed through.

It is a facade designed to be read in motion. Pedestrians walking along the commercial street experience it as a sequence of shifting planes rather than a single image. That kind of kinetic quality usually requires complex geometry or expensive cladding systems. Here it comes from the simple act of offsetting flat concrete slabs by a few degrees.

The Curved Brick Volume

Around the corner, the building shifts register entirely. A curved brick tower rises along the residential alley, clad in grey brick laid in tight horizontal courses. Where the main facade is about transparency and spectacle, this volume is deliberately opaque, grounding the building in the material language of Seoul's residential fabric. The curve softens what would otherwise be an abrupt transition between the two street conditions, wrapping the corner without calling too much attention to itself.

The brick tower also houses the vertical circulation and service spaces, keeping the floor plates behind the glazed facade as open and column-free as possible. It is a pragmatic move dressed up in contextual courtesy.

Night Activation

Nighttime performance was explicitly part of the brief, and the building delivers. Linear lighting integrated along the edges of the concrete slabs traces each floor line in a soft glow, turning the layered facade into something closer to a lantern. The gradient glass, partially opaque by day, becomes a screen that reveals silhouettes and interior warmth without fully exposing the spaces behind it. The curved brick tower picks up its own strip lighting, so the entire building reads as a continuous illuminated mass rather than a collection of lit windows.

The twilight shots reveal how the architects calibrated the relationship between solid and transparent surfaces. The light washes are gentle, not performative. They highlight the texture of the concrete and the grain of the brick without washing either out. For a commercial building on a busy Seoul street, where competition for visual attention is fierce, this restraint is notable.

Entry and Ground Level

The pedestrian entry sits beneath a cantilevered concrete overhang, framed by the horizontal grey brick cladding that wraps from the alley-facing volume. It is a compressed threshold that makes the transition from the street feel deliberate, a moment of decompression before you step into the open floor plates above. Inside, the ground level opens to full-height glazed walls that throw striped sunlight across polished concrete floors. The exposed ceiling beams and the play of light give the interior a raw, almost industrial character that pairs well with the exterior's material honesty.

Upper Floors and Double Height

The double-height space at the top of the building is the project's most generous interior moment. Floor-to-ceiling glass floods it with daylight, and the extra concrete plane overhead provides a deep soffit that shades the glass from direct sun while maintaining the illusion of an additional story from the street. It is a space that feels larger than the building's 520 square meters would suggest.

Circulation between floors is handled by an open-tread staircase with timber treads and a glass balustrade, set beneath a white coffered ceiling. The material palette shifts from raw concrete and brick on the exterior to warmer timber and white finishes inside, creating a clear distinction between the building's public face and its occupied interiors.

Rooftop

The rooftop terrace, decked in timber and bounded by white railings, offers a usable outdoor space that feels surprisingly private given the building's dense urban context. The curved brick tower rises through this level, anchoring the terrace visually and providing a vertical datum that ties the roofscape back to the street presence below. At dusk, the tower's integrated lighting turns it into a beacon visible from the alley, marking the building's position in the neighborhood even from above.

Plans and Drawings

The floor plans reveal a compact, efficient layout organized around a corner stair core that nestles into the curved brick volume. The first floor plan shows the entry sequence, a sunken courtyard with planting, and the stair core, all compressed into a tight footprint. By the third floor, the plan opens into a generous office plate with rooftop terraces accessible on two sides. The front elevation drawing clarifies the stepping strategy on the sloping site, showing how the building negotiates grade changes to achieve its six visible levels from certain vantage points.

The sections are particularly revealing. They show the parking level tucked below grade, the staircase connecting all vertical spaces, and the concealed double-height room at the top. The extra concrete plane that creates the five-story illusion is clearly visible in section, confirming that it is structurally independent rather than merely decorative. It carries its own loads and defines the upper space without supporting the roof, a detail that would be invisible from the street but that structures the entire design logic.

Why This Project Matters

Nonhyun 169 demonstrates that regulatory constraint does not have to mean diminished ambition. Faced with a FAR well below the commercial norm and strict residential zoning controls, See Architects found spatial generosity through illusion, layering, and material intelligence. The extra concrete plane, the gradient glass, and the dual facade language all work in concert to make a 520-square-meter building punch well above its weight in both presence and usable interior quality.

More broadly, the project offers a convincing model for how small commercial buildings can mediate between conflicting urban conditions. Rather than choosing one identity, the building holds two: commercial spectacle on the main street, residential courtesy on the alley. Neither face is dishonest. Both emerge from the same structural and material logic. That kind of coherence is harder to achieve than formal novelty, and it makes Nonhyun 169 a project worth returning to.

Nonhyun 169 by See Architects (lead architect: Kee Lew). Seoul, South Korea. 520 m². Completed 2025. Photography by Kim Yongsung.

About the Studio

Share Your Own Work on uni.xyz

If projects like this are the kind of work you want to make, uni.xyz is a place to publish your own, find collaborators, and enter design competitions.