Rotterdam MVRDV studio returns with a new work in Seoul, The Imprint, a complex of buildings dedicated to art and entertainment near South Korea’s Incheon Airport. A peculiarity of the structure is that it hasn’t been designed with windows, as it does not require natural light, it also has an indoor theme park and a disco. The facades of the buildings become white canvases, which the team of architects has exploited to the maximum, recovering the architectural elements from the structures of Paradise City, a resort hotel that serves the largest airport in South Korea. As stated by Winy Maas, one of the members of MVRDV:

“By placing, as it were, surrounding buildings into the facades of our buildings and in the central plaza, we connect The Imprint with the neighbours. This ensures coherence. Paradise City is not a collection of individual objects such as Las Vegas, but a real city.”

One of the construction “secrets” is to use individual panels made of fiberglass reinforced concrete subsequently cast into molds, produced using architects’ 3D modeling files. The choice of the gold color was strategic, the entrance of one of the facades was designed to look like a raised curtain immediately followed by a walkway that runs through the building. MVRDV specifies that:

“The virgin building has received a splash of gold, this makes it as if the entrance is also illuminated at night by a ray of sunlight. Passengers in the incoming aircraft can already see this ‘sun’ from above the ocean, as a kind of welcome to South Korea. Reflection and theatricality are therefore combined. With our design, after the nightly escapades, a zen-like silence follows during the day, providing an almost literally reflective situation for the after parties”.

The intent of MVRDV studio wasn’t just to create an entertainment facility, but also a true artwork.