Busan, South Korea: Innovative Architecture Makes Use of an Open Air Cinema in Busan, South Korea

Dutch architecture firm MVRDV designed the City Sofa -- a proposed new film palace for the Busan International Film Festival -- as a “cinematic village” of interlocking programmatic zones. The building's volume is “curled” upward to create a sandwich of spaces: an interior valley, covered plazas below, and an unprecedented urban open-air cinema on top. Each zone can operate independently year-round, allowing the building to remain continuously active even when the festival is not running.

The design places the full volume at the northern edge of the site, adjacent to the future media industry zone, creating strong urban presence while forming what the architects called an urban “chair” visible from the surrounding city.