It’s a green building, all right! It’s green because it is covered in a perennial plant called pachysandra which stays green all year. This vertical garden is planted onto hundreds of 16 inch wire mesh tiles filled with bamboo shavings which provide a rooting medium for the plants. Who would do this and why? This was the brainstorm of Minsuk Cho of Mass Studies, an architectural firm with a strong marketing bent. When asked by edgy Antwerp fashion designer Ann Demeulmeester to come up with a design concept which would attract attention to her new store in the busy city of Seoul, South Korea he proposed a contemporary building wrapped in living green.

The 7,900 three-story building is mixed use. The Ann Deemeulmeester boutique occupies the ground floor. Limestone steps lead upstairs to an Indian restaurant, and downstairs to another clothing boutique. The cobblestones provide an attractive contrast to the sleek facade.

The wall to the downstairs space is planted with moss. A network of tiny rubber hoses provides irrigation for the plants 24 hours a day. Although the building is not “green” in the sustainable sense of the word, the blanket of plantings has it’s own ecosystem of insects and frogs, oxygenating the air and insulating the interior to some extent.

Store interior is ex-TREME-ly minimal. Staying consistent with the branding of the Antwerp store, the floors are dark stained oak and the cabinetry and counters are white keeping the focus squarely upon the fashions. The undulating ceiling of earth colored concrete was a tricky engineering feat accomplished by setting the beams in an unusual sideways fashion.

The clothing appears to be mostly unconstructed and loosely draped, appealing to high styled urban women and men. ?”A mixture of rock, punk and military styles.”

Demeulmeester is one of the Antwerp Six, an avantgarde group of designers who are credited for establishing Antwerp as a mecca for cutting edge fashion in the 1980′s.

Photographs courtesy of Interior Design magazine April 2008