There’s something mesmerizing about watching waves crash against a harbor, the way they ripple and fold into themselves with an effortless rhythm. Japanese architect Kengo Kuma must have spent some time observing this when designing the Busan Lotte Tower, because he’s managed to bottle that exact energy and stack it into the sky.
Rising from the former City Hall site in South Korea’s bustling coastal city, this skyscraper isn’t your typical glass-and-steel rectangle reaching skyward. Instead, Kengo Kuma and Associates have created something that feels alive, like the building itself is caught in a gentle oceanic current.
Designer: Kengo Kuma and Associates
The tower’s design captures the wake patterns left by ships moving through Busan’s busy harbor. Think about those moments when you watch a boat glide through calm water, leaving behind those beautiful, undulating trails. That’s exactly what Kuma’s team translated into architecture. The facade features horizontal bands that ripple across the exterior, creating a continuous line that wraps around the entire structure.
What makes this approach so clever is how it blurs the usual architectural boundaries. The glass shifts seamlessly from transparent to gently tinted, mirroring the changing colors of Busan’s coastal sky throughout the day. It’s not trying to dominate the landscape but rather reflect and celebrate it. This is pure Kuma, who’s known for his philosophy of creating buildings that harmonize with their surroundings rather than fight against them. The structure itself is conceived as a stack of curved transparent volumes, each layer subtly offset to suggest motion. This creates an interplay of concave and convex surfaces that echo, you guessed it, more waves. It’s architecture as poetry, where form doesn’t just follow function but captures feeling.
At ground level, the experience shifts. Those curved glass volumes frame glimpses of the activity happening inside, connecting the rhythm of urban life with the broader cadence of the harbor nearby. It’s like the building is breathing with the city, offering passersby windows into the life happening within while simultaneously pulling in the energy of the port. When evening arrives, the tower transforms again. Soft interior lighting brings those horizontal lines into subtle relief, creating the impression of an illuminated current rising through the building. Imagine standing at the waterfront at dusk, watching this glowing structure that looks less like a conventional skyscraper and more like captured light moving upward through water.
The project, which began construction in August 2023 under Lotte Construction with structural engineering by Arup and CNP, is expected to complete by 2028. It’s been ongoing under Kuma’s direction, and if you’re familiar with his body of work, this fits perfectly into his architectural language. This is the same designer who gave us Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium and the Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum, projects that similarly prioritize integration with their contexts over architectural ego.
What sets Kuma apart in contemporary architecture is his resistance to creating monuments to himself. While many starchitects chase dramatic, instantly recognizable signatures, Kuma seems more interested in creating buildings that feel inevitable in their settings, as if they grew there naturally. The Busan Lotte Tower embodies this approach perfectly. It’s bold without being brash, distinctive without being disconnected from its environment.
For a city like Busan, which lives and breathes its maritime identity, having a landmark that doesn’t just acknowledge but celebrates that connection feels right. The tower doesn’t sit on the harbor pretending to be anywhere else. Instead, it amplifies what makes Busan special, turning the patterns of ships and waves into something permanent yet fluid. This project shows us what happens when an architect truly listens to a place. The result isn’t just another tall building competing for attention in an increasingly crowded skyline. It’s a vertical landscape that captures the essence of where land meets sea, where urban energy meets ocean rhythm, where glass and steel somehow manage to feel as natural as water itself.
The post Kengo Kuma’s Wave-Inspired Tower Rises in Busan first appeared on Yanko Design.
