First World Towers is the first residential development to be realized in New Songdo City, an all-new sustainable community in a free-trade zone on the waterfront in Incheon, Korea. Housing 7,000 of the city’s 65,000 residents, First World Towers contains 2,545 apartments and live/work spaces, as well as a health club, a daycare center, and a senior’s center.

The complex was conceived as being an assemblage of distinct communities. An analysis of Korean social hierarchy (the Ma-Ul, the Dong-Ne, and the Yi-Woot) informed the organization of the First World Towers into four courtyard communities each of which is subdivided into three neighborhoods of approximately 200 households. The traditional Korean built environment also influenced the design, wherein circulation through palaces and gardens is characterized by repeated shifts in orientation and displaced axes. At the perimeter, gates and seven-story street walls provide a sense of enclosure, beyond which densely planted interior courtyards are viewed through large scale “urban windows.”