Luxury Hotels Atlas / Places / South Korea / Seogwipo / Podo Hotel
Podo Hotel
Seogwipo, South Korea · Independent · Accessible Luxury
From above, the plan is a bunch of grapes, which is what podo means. Jun Itami finished this one-story hotel in 2001 for Pinx founder Kim Hong-ju: twenty-six rooms in the oreum hills of Andeok, the roof held low to the parasitic cones and the old thatched houses. Korean rooms face the mountain. Western rooms face Sanbangsan and the sea. A gallery sits in the basement. In 2006 the building won the Asian Award for Culture and Landscape.
- 26 rooms
- Opened 2001
- Neighborhood: Andeok-myeon
- Architect: Jun Itami
About Podo Hotel
- Itami asked for a titanium roof so the hotel might last long enough to be read as a ruin. The metal still shifts color with the Jeju sky.
- Korean rooms keep ondol floors, hanji paper, and a hinoki soaking tub. Western rooms take the sunset toward Sanbangsan.
- SK Networks has run the Pinx resort since 2014. A later renewal was planned with Itami's daughter, Yoo Yi-hwa, so the original rooms would not be redrawn.
- A short hop from the door are Itami's Bangju Church, the Water Wind Stone Museum, and Tadao Ando's Bonte Museum.
History
Jun Itami, born Yoo Dong-ryong in Tokyo in 1937, was a second-generation Korean architect working in Japan when Pinx founder Kim Hong-ju asked him to build on Jeju. Kim had seen Itami's Church of Stone in Hokkaido. Itami started with the Pinx golf clubhouse in 1998 and finished Podo Hotel in 2001: one floor, 26 rooms, a building area of about 4,050 square meters, reinforced concrete with some steel, a circular courtyard and a square one, a gallery in the basement. Korean-style rooms sit on the mountain side. Western-style rooms sit toward the sea.
He took the roof from Jeju's oreum, the small volcanic cones, and from the line of old thatched houses, and he asked for titanium so the building could weather into something like a ruin. Corridors branch like grape vines, which is where the name comes from. In 2006 the hotel won the Asian Award for Culture and Landscape of Settlements. Itami died in Tokyo in 2011. SK Networks took over the Pinx resort in 2014. A renewal roughly sixteen years after the opening was done with his daughter, Yoo Yi-hwa, of the office ITM, on the rule that the plan itself would stay.
The setting
The hotel is at 863 Sallongnam-ro, Sangcheon-ri, Andeok-myeon, up in the oreum country on Hallasan's southwestern slope. Pinx golf is part of the same grounds, and The Annex, the later 43-room wing, is a few minutes away by car. Itami's Bangju Church, the Water Wind Stone Museum, and Tadao Ando's Bonte Museum are the neighbors architects come for. Sanbangsan and the southwestern sea show from the Western rooms, past the stone walls.
Awards
- Asian Award for Culture and Landscape of Settlements (2006)
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