Seoul’s commercial streets are spaces where urban form, retail programs, and pedestrian behavior overlap, and their structure and experience cannot be sufficiently explained by performance indicators alone, such as the number of shops or pedestrian ...
Seoul’s commercial streets are spaces where urban form, retail programs, and pedestrian behavior overlap, and their structure and experience cannot be sufficiently explained by performance indicators alone, such as the number of shops or pedestrian volume. This study aims to understand commercial streets through the interaction of urban fabric, interface spaces, and three-dimensional visual–perceptual structure, and to extend the analytical findings to the architectural design of an office complex facility located on a linear commercial street. First, the study reviews prior literature on the formation and typologies of commercial streets; plot configuration and street-section structure; street-facing building frontages and interface spaces; urban visual perception and 3D Isovist analysis. It then analyzes six commercial streets in Yongsan-gu using continuous 80 m segments, conducting analyses of urban tissue–plot–street section, interface-space types and distribution, and 3D Isovist-based Figure–Ground ratios (Figure ratios). The results confirm that differences in block/plot structure and street-section conditions generate distinct three-dimensional visibility patterns through the density and arrangement of interface spaces, and that these patterns strongly mediate pedestrians’ visual–perceptual experience as well as the street’s atmosphere and vitality.
In particular, the study categorizes commercial streets into several visual–perceptual structural types by combining (1) interface-space arrangement patterns and (2) fluctuation patterns of the 3D-Isovist-based Figure ratio. This analytical framework is further extended to the design of the office complex facility at Gangnam-daero 581. As a linear commercial corridor, the area around the Gangnam-daero 581 site is characterized by a continuous frontage of high-rise office complexes along the main avenue and an adjoining back street where neighborhood retail and residential uses are mixed. Existing office complexes along this corridor often operate through a one-directional relationship with the city due to a lack of interface spaces, high Figure ratios, and closed internal organization.
This study interprets such conditions as “Bad Pixels” that accumulate and reinforce affective structures of pleasure-seeking, hierarchy, and fatigue, and proposes “Anchor Pixels” as a design concept that introduces everyday recovery and affective breathing room. Anchor Pixels are composed of program units that naturally invite bodily presence and visual attention—such as public bathing, markets, lounges, care/learning spaces, and shared lounges. They are concentrated in the lower levels as public and commercial pixels directly engaging the street, and are inserted in the mid-to-upper levels as nodal elements around shared cores and void/terrace areas within office and financial programs. At the lower levels, Anchor Pixels combine with circulation that penetrates from Gangnam-daero through an internal void to the back street, reorganizing interface-space density and three-dimensional visibility. At the mid-to-upper levels, the integration of office/financial programs with shared voids and terraces produces new visual–perceptual scenes.
This study is significant in that it presents a research–design linkage model that interprets commercial streets through the continuous interaction of urban fabric, interface spaces, and three-dimensional visual–perceptual structure, and concretizes this framework in the design of an office complex facility. By applying the indicators and typological outcomes derived from the Yongsan analysis to the Gangnam-daero design, the study demonstrates how commercial-street research can be translated into concrete planning principles for lower-level public space, interface-space organization, vertical zoning, and void planning. Future research should extend the proposed analytical framework and Anchor Pixel strategy to other linear commercial streets and mixed-use complexes, and further refine the relationship between visual–perceptual structure and affective structure through empirical studies combined with pedestrian behavior and cognition surveys.