Apollon Immersive Works Wins iF DESIGN AWARD 2023 in Two Disciplines

Apollon Immersive Works has been named a winner of the iF DESIGN AWARD 2023 in two disciplines. Encountering the Art, a set of media sculptures at Asia Media Center in Yeoksam, Seoul, won in Interior Architecture, and The Gift, a Gmarket brand film on the corner billboard of The Times Square EDITION in New York, won in Branding & Communication Design.

iF DESIGN AWARD 2023

Founded in Hanover, Germany, in 1953, the iF DESIGN AWARD is an international design award that the industry counts among the world's three major design awards, alongside Red Dot and IDEA. According to the organizer, nearly 11,000 entries from 56 countries were submitted in 2023, and a jury of 133 experts from 20 countries selected the winners in two rounds of judging.

Encountering the Art: Interior Architecture

Asia Media Center is an office building completed in Yeoksam-dong in April 2022. By analyzing the movement of pedestrians and building users, Apollon Immersive Works selected three sites for media sculptures: the public open space outside, the underground parking entrance, and the elevator lobby inside. The public open space was staged as an outdoor media gallery among water features and birch trees under the concept of an "Open Art Gallery." The sculpture was designed as a V-shaped aluminum frame that takes circulation and frontal views into account, with LED modules of different sizes arranged in depth. Working with the architecture, landscape lighting, and landscaping teams from the construction stage, the media was designed as part of the spatial plan rather than added to a finished building.

The Gift: Branding & Communication Design

The Gift is an anamorphic brand film that Gmarket Global presented on the corner billboard of The Times Square EDITION in New York. A gift box tied with a ribbon opens onto a factory making K-pop, K-beauty, and fashion products, layer by layer. Keeping the curved screen wrapped around the building's corner, the team designed the illusion of looking through glass into a giant shop window. In 2021, when COVID-19 made site visits impossible, Apollon Immersive Works built a digital twin of the Times Square area to set the viewpoint and test the illusion. Apollon Immersive Works led creative strategy and project management, and Chimney Group handled content production.

One is an installation people meet in the same place every day; the other is a film people glance up at as they pass through the street. Two very different works were recognized in different disciplines in the same year.