Chainmail-wrapped South Korean building is turning heads

(Photo: (Iwan Baan))

A new art gallery might be the first building to be draped from head to toe in chainmail. And, given the intricacy of its design and the fact of its hand-welded 520,000 stainless steel rings, it may be the last.
 
One part disbelief, two parts swords and one part elegance mix in the mind when it's first seen overlaying the building.
 
Also the question: "Is that really chainmail?"
 
(Photo: Jeffrey Kock, Front Inc)The answer is "yes."
 
Chainmail, legit, made from 520,000 hand-welded stainless steel rings, covers the cubed (with slight protrusions and irregularities, including a staircase) concrete building, in Seoul, South Korea, from head to foot on all sides.
 
The gallery's neighborhood inspired the much-talked-about facade, said Florian Idenburg, whose New York City architecture firm, SO – IL, designed the 11,000-square-foot building, which opened in March.
 
The neighborhood's old, but it's in the process of being revitalized into a bohemian, weekend destination. Where the city's hip walk and window shop, taking in the shady, tree-lined streets, sipping coffee at outdoor cafes like "IceSand Coffee," shopping at vibrant, boutique stores like "Coolgirls Room," and visiting the multiple art galleries that have sprung up among the statued plazas and clean, open spaces.
 
Setting the tone for the gallery's chainmailed, medieval spirit is a nearby 14th-century grand palace hilltop compound, Gyeongbokgung, one of Seoul's premiere attractions.
 
The clients wanted a blocky, windowless, modernist, concrete gallery space. However, it became clear that design would clash -- starkly -- with the older buildings and condensed nature of the neighborhood surrounding it.
 
So, architects at SO – IL started thinking of ways to soften the sharp visual contrast the concrete shell, as designed, would create. They needed a material that blurred the building's lines and that could also withstand a typhoon's heavy, wind-driven rain and a Seoul winter snow. Metal -- in the form of chainmail -- soon emerged as an answer.
 
(Photo: Front Inc.)Then the work began, and it wasn't easy. Making the chainmail idea a reality took a year -- six months of logistics and six months of production.
 
For aesthetic and structural reasons, the chainmail's rings needed to be larger in diameter than the rings used in traditional chainmail products like butcher's gloves, shark suits and medieval armor.
 
SO – IL, and the project's engineering firm, settled on an inch-and-a-half ring design, about three times bigger than traditional chainmail rings.
 
Since chainmail is not usually -- if ever -- used on a building-sized scale, the design required one-of-a-kind handmade production.
 
"It's like weaving," said Idenburg, of how he, his firm and the design engineers had to think of constructing the building's outer layer. They also had to find a manufacturer that could do it by hand.
 
Turns out that was found in a village in an industrial region in the bare China countryside about four hours southwest of Beijing.
 
Idenburg visited the village early in the production process to check on development. "When I first showed up, it was a little bit of a disappointment," he said.
 
There was one worker in a grimy, small workshop measuring about 18 by 30 feet; it had taken him a month and a half to make 1 square foot of chainmail. Idenburg was ready to think of another way.