The Imprint is part of the Paradise City complex, consisting of six buildings, offering a complete entertainment and hotel attraction located less than 1 km from South Korea's largest airport. Considering the proposed program of two buildings, one with a nightclub and the other with an indoor theme park, the client required a windowless design but one that still integrated with the other buildings in the complex. Therefore, the design of The Imprint stems from a simple question: Can we design an impressive façade that connects with its surroundings even without windows? The design reflects the façades of the surrounding buildings as embossings on coverings and façades, using simple building forms and shadows.
Winy Maas, the founder and co-founder of MVRDV, states, “By placing the façades and the central plaza, we are connecting The Imprint with its neighbors. This provides consistency. The Imprint is not a collection of individual objects like in Las Vegas, but a real city.” To achieve the desired feel of the surrounding buildings, the façade of The Imprint is made of glass fiber-reinforced concrete panels. Many of the 3,869 panels are unique, requiring separate molds to be created using MVRDV's 3D modeling files from the design phase.
Winy Maas adds, "The facades, with their mirrored ceilings and exposed glass floors, are raised like a curtain at the entrances, evoking a sense of excitement inside. With our design, after the night escapes, a zen-like silence is experienced during the day, and a nearly perfectly reflective state emerges for the following parties."
