63 Building
skyscraper in South Korea
The 63 Building (Korean: 63빌딩; RR: Yuksam Building), officially called 63 SQUARE (formerly Hanwha 63 City), is a skyscraper on the island of Yeouido, overlooking the Han River in Seoul, South Korea. At 249.6 m (819 ft) high, it was the tallest building outside North America when it was opened on July 27, 1985, and it is the second-tallest gold-clad building in the world after Grand Lisboa in Macau. It stood as South Korea's tallest building until the Hyperion Tower surpassed it in 2003, but remained the country's tallest commercial building until the Northeast Asia Trade Tower was topped-out in 2009.
The 63 Building was built as a landmark for the 1988 Summer Olympics. 63 is something of a misnomer since only 60 floors are above ground level. Floors 61–63 are restricted areas. The skyscraper is the headquarters of Korea Life Insurance, Industrial Bank of Korea Securities, and other major financial companies.
The design of the structure is based on the Hanja character for person or human being (人 or in) in a subtle reference by the designers to the business of Daehan Life, the insurance company that constructed the building.
History
Construction
The 63 Building's construction broke ground in February 1980, at the height of South Korea's economic boom. It was built at a cost of 180 billion won, and construction was completed in May 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “63 Building” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.