Lotte World Tower, Seoul, South Korea

One of the central challenges facing supertall towers is that they are prodigious consumers of energy.

The Lotte World Tower (a/k/a Lotte Super Tower) in Seoul, South Korea, shows the path forward for urban density. It is far more than a high-performance supertall building. It demonstrates how to successfully accomplish commercial, sustainability and civic goals within a supertall vertical structure within urban centers.

The slender tower soars 1,821 ft. and some 123 floors over the Songpa-gu district—the largest population district in Seoul and host to the 1988 Olympics.

It is the world’s sixth tallest building, the tallest in Korea, and the tallest of the 35-country member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). More interestingly, it provides greater variety of functions than normally found in a mixed-use tall building. The more than 3.2 million sf of space encompasses a public plaza, luxury hotel, shopping mall, healthcare and cultural facilities as well as offices and residences. The top 10 stories are reserved for extensive public use and entertainment facilities, including an observation deck and rooftop café, and an atrium lobby eight stories high.

To provide optimal comfort for Lotte World Tower’s occupants while minimizing energy and water consumption, Syska Hennessy Group’s MEP design incorporates innovative state-of-the-art technology, including:

• Displacement air and a radiant floor cooling/heating system for the eight-story atrium lobby rather than traditional—and highly inefficient—air-conditioning. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was carried out for the lobby to investigate system performance.
• 100-percent outside air units with energy recovery wheels to capture spill and exhaust air.
  Variable-frequency drives for the majority of the HVAC equipment.
• Geothermal, photovoltaics and Windspire turbines to provide a renewable source to support the building’s energy needs.
• Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system to monitor and control power usage.
  External shading and dimming systems to control interior light levels.
• Water-saving features, including low-flow fixtures and greywater reuse, to yield anticipated water savings of 30 percent.
• Independent but connected telecommunications, technology, security, audiovisual, lighting and control systems for resilience and integration into the building’s complex systems.