Dutch architects MVRDV have won a competition to design a city centre for Gwanggyo, a new town south of Seoul, Korea.
The future new town, located 35 kilometers south of the Korean capital, will consist of two centres. MVRDV’s Gwanggyo so-called Power Centre is envisioned as a self-sufficient town comprising housing, office, culture, retail, leisure and education spaces and will house 77,000 inhabitants.  
The plan consists of a series of overgrown hill shaped buildings. “This diverse program has different needs for phasing, positioning and size,”say the architects. “To facilitate this all elements are designed as rings. By pushing these rings outwards, every part of the program receives a terrace for outdoor life.”Box hedges are planted on the terraces and roofs of the buildings, which are intended to improve ventilation, and reduce energy and water usage. Atriums within each tower create lobbies for housing and offices, plazas for the shopping centre, and halls for the museum and leisure areas.
Since the beginning of the millennium local nodes with a high density concentration of mixed program are used in Korean town planning. These nodes consist of a mix of public, retail, culture, housing, offices and leisure generating life in new metropolitan areas and encouraging further developments around them: the Power Centre strategy. The Gwanggyo Power Centre will consist of 200,000m2 housing, 48,000m2 offices, 200,000m2 mix of culture, retail, leisure and education and 200,000m2 parking.
Completion of the development is envisioned for 2011. A consortium lead by Daewoo develops the project with local firm DA Group, which commissioned MVRDV to design the scheme. British firm Arup is involved as engineer.

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