FOUND FOUNDED HEADQUARTERS
Found Founded is a design studio working across different scales and disciplines, from product design to furniture, spatial design, graphics and digital experiences. Its new headquarters provides a place from which the studio can continue to work and make in its own way, while establishing a new centre for what lies ahead. The building was conceived as an environment in which Found Founded’s people, work and the things they create can naturally accumulate over time.
The site lies within a low-rise residential neighbourhood in Seogyo-dong, one layer removed from its busy commercial streets. Multi-family houses and older homes sit alongside external staircases and incremental extensions, forming a familiar urban landscape in Seoul in which traces of different periods coexist. Within this setting, the building takes its place as a simple, solid volume. It sits naturally among the overlapping elements of its surroundings while retaining a presence of its own through the clarity of its form and material. This ability to relate to its context without losing its own character also reflects an attitude found in the work of Found Founded. We wanted the building to be something that could be naturally discovered and remembered within this familiar urban landscape.
The building opens itself to the city only where necessary. Rather than extending views in every direction, openings are positioned where light and particular views are welcomed, while voids and gardens establish more measured relationships with the outside. Once inside, the complexity of the surrounding city gradually recedes, replaced by light and planting at close proximity. Although it is a workplace, the intention was to create an environment closer to the comfort of entering a home than to the atmosphere of a conventional office.
Approaching the building, the first elements encountered are a circular column supporting the structure and the entrance beyond it. Although both belong to the same concrete structure, their surfaces are chipped to distinguish them from the surrounding smooth concrete. This establishes a sequence in which the eye moves naturally from the column towards the entrance, allowing each to be read both as part of the overall structure and as an element in its own right.
The rough surface surrounding the entrance also subtly indicates where to enter while becoming a surface that receives light. Sunlight entering through the void above casts shadows of varying depth across its texture throughout the day, while the planting nearby changes with the seasons. In this way, an entrance encountered every day can present a slightly different scene as light, time and season change.
Beyond the entrance, the ground floor opens into a communal space set one level below the ground. Conceived much like the living room of a house, it accommodates informal gatherings, everyday conversations and moments of rest, as well as meetings and events. From the lowered floor, the garden planting is seen from below, bringing nearby nature into view in place of the surrounding city. Stepped seating rises towards the rear, eventually meeting the back garden again at ground level.
Movement through the upper floors follows the light descending from above. A skylight sits over the central stairwell, while the staircase is left as exposed concrete rather than being wrapped in an additional finish. Daylight from the skylight reaches down through the building and naturally guides movement upwards. As the light changes throughout the day, it alters the appearance of the stair and concrete surfaces, connecting the floors through a continuous vertical sequence.
The second and third floors share the same spatial order. Each consists of an open workspace and a separate room: a model-making room on the second floor and a meeting room on the third. Although their basic arrangement is similar, differences in the direction of light and in the views framed by their openings give each floor a distinct atmosphere.
In the workspaces, where people spend much of the day, solid timber flooring and white-painted walls replace the exposed concrete of the communal areas. The choice was intended to create an atmosphere closer to the comfort of a home. The warmth of the timber softens the daylight spreading across the white walls and ceilings, while the material character gradually becomes gentler as one moves from the solid concrete communal areas into the places of everyday work.
For those working in design, natural light is not only important to the atmosphere of a space but also to seeing materials and colours accurately. The building’s orientation and openings were therefore arranged to allow daylight and air to pass naturally through the interior. Windows on both the north and south sides of the workspaces bring in light from different directions throughout the day, while opening them creates a path for natural cross-ventilation. Openings towards the external void bring softer, indirect light into the interior, and windows on different floors are positioned so that they do not directly face one another, maintaining a degree of privacy between spaces.
The aim was to provide an environment where artificial lighting could be kept to a minimum throughout the day, and where opening a window would allow fresh air and a breeze to pass through the workspace. Everyday comfort comes from basic architectural considerations — orientation, openings, daylight and air — rather than from these being treated as separate strategies.
Following the light upwards, the staircase eventually reaches the roof garden. Although modest in size, the roof is loosely divided into different areas through structure and planting. These spaces remain connected while retaining a degree of separation, allowing people to spend time together or step aside for a quieter moment within the same place. Here, the city that has only been encountered in fragments from within the building opens up again, with the roofs and houses of Seogyo-dong forming the surrounding view.
Within the building’s otherwise solid order, moments of freedom were deliberately left in place. The slender rooftop railing follows the rectilinear form of the building before gently curving around its corners. At times it disappears among the planting; elsewhere it rises above the concrete wall and becomes visible from the street as a single line. These small shifts introduce a certain looseness within the building’s more ordered framework.
Found Founded Headquarters is less a building intended to present a single completed image than a place able to accommodate the everyday life and work that will continue within it. For someone visiting for the first time, we hoped it might be discovered as a clear presence within a familiar urban landscape; for those who work here every day, as a place where familiar spaces can be seen slightly differently through changing light, air and seasons.
As the planting grows and traces of people, objects and work accumulate over time, the building will also gradually change. We hope it can hold Found Founded as it is today while remaining a calm and solid centre in which the process of discovering and making what comes next can continue to unfold.
