Busan City (Mayor Park Hyung-joon) and Busan Creative Economy Innovation Center (CEO Kim Yong-woo) announced on the 13th that they have selected an architectural team for an international design competition that will serve as the blueprint for the 'Global Startup Hub Busan' to be built at the first dock of Bukhang, and are moving forward with the project in earnest.
This competition was divided into two stages from January to May of this year. In the first stage of the international nomination application, a total of 37 world-class architectural teams from 11 countries registered to participate, and in the second stage of the proposal competition, four out of the five teams that were nominated submitted their works.
On May 7th, after a two-stage design competition, the architectural team consisting of OBR (Open Building Research, Italy, CEO Paolo Brescia & Tommaso Principi) and Kang Bu-Jon Architects & Associates (Korea, CEO Kang Bu-Jon) was finally selected, beating out a high competition rate of 37 to 1.
OBR, which won this design competition, has carried out various projects in both the public and private sectors, and its representative completed buildings include the Pythagoras Museum in Italy and the Fiori residential complex in Milan.
Kang Bu-jon, the representative of the joint participating team, Kang Bu-jon Architects & Associates, is a young architect from Busan who currently runs local architectural offices in Busan and the United States and has participated in the planning and design of the Busan Opera House.
The winning architectural team received high praise from the judges for presenting a design plan that included a building structure plan that respected the past and projected the future.
In particular, ▲a space plan that accurately reproduces the form of the existing warehouse starting from historical traces ▲a design proposal that considers the environment, energy saving, and sustainability ▲an architectural identity that is meaningful rather than flashy by being integrated with the surrounding urban context ▲a creative space composition that delicately reads the temporality and locality of the past and reinterprets them with a modern sensibility while at the same time containing future value stood out.
The team selected through this competition will be given priority negotiation rights for the architectural design contract, and the city plans to finalize the detailed design in the second half of the year by reflecting the opinions of cultural heritage experts on changes to the current status of cultural heritage.
In addition, the city plans to promote policies to continuously activate the startup ecosystem, such as creating a ‘Global Startup Hub Busan,’ expanding the global investment network, attracting overseas startups, and operating startup support programs, to help Busan leap forward as a global startup city.
Mayor Park Hyung-joon said, “The first dock of Busan Port is a passageway connecting the sea and the city, and a space where Busan connects with the world beyond Asia. I will do my best to make the ‘Global Startup Hub Busan’ to be built here a global hub of vitality and a space of opportunity that connects the past and the future,” adding, “We will focus all of the city’s capabilities and administrative power to make the ‘Global Startup Hub Busan’ a global hub for startup innovation, with the goal of opening in 2026.”
Kim Yong-woo, CEO of Busan Changgyeong, said, “As a representative cooperative organization, we will do our best to make ‘Global Startup Hub Busan’ a global startup innovation base with the goal of opening in 2026.”
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