After seven years of development and building, Zaha Hadid's massive Dongdaemun Design Plaza and Park project (DDP) finally opened to the public on March 21. The structure was designed to be a "multiplex cultural center," with offices, a museum, an education space, a design library and art shop, and various other facilities. With over 85,000 square meters of lot and building space, the DDP is the biggest atypical building in the world and the first of its kind.
Of the structure, Hadid's website reads: "The DDP Park is a place for leisure, relaxation and refuge – a new green oasis within the busy urban surroundings of Dongdaemun. The design integrates the park and plaza seamlessly as one, blurring the boundary between architecture and nature in a continuous, fluid landscape. Voids in the park’s surface give visitors glimpses into the innovative world of design below, making the DDP an important link between the city’s contemporary culture, emerging nature and history...The 30,000 square meter park reinterprets the spatial concepts of traditional Korean garden design: layering, horizontality, blurring the relationship between the interior and the exterior – with no single feature dominating the perspective."
Check out the tour video from Dezeen below:
