Signiel Seoul

Signiel Seoul opened on 3 April 2017, the day the Lotte World Tower opened and the Lotte Group turned fifty. It occupies the 76th to the 101st floors of the 555-metre tower: ballroom at the bottom, lobby and lounges on the 79th, restaurants on the 81st, pool and spa on the 85th and 86th, and 235 rooms and suites from the 87th up. Lotte made the brand for it, joining "signature" to the L of Lotte, and left its own name out. Private residences fill the floors below.

The architects, Kohn Pedersen Fox, shaped the tower on the tapering curves of a Korean porcelain vessel and a calligraphy brush, and because it narrows as it rises the rooms differ in shape even within the same category; in some, the bath faces the city or the Han River. The guests' lounge on the 79th floor is laid out like a European library. On the 81st, Stay serves the French cooking of Yannick Alléno, who has overseen it since the opening, beside Bicena, a Korean restaurant. OKYTO's Seoul guide weighs Jamsil against Gangnam and the old centre.

The tower was the ambition of Lotte's founder, Shin Kyuk-ho, who bought the site beside Lotte World in 1987 and wanted to build there a skyscraper to rank among the world's tallest. The plans went from 108 storeys to 36 and back; officials ruled out a hundred floors in 1990, the Asian financial crisis stalled the project, and the air force objected on flight-safety grounds. The permit for 123 storeys came in 2010, after the runway of Seoul Air Base nearby had been realigned by about three degrees.

Sources: Wikipedia; French Korean Chamber of Commerce; Sidae; NewDaily; TTG Asia; The Leading Hotels of the World; Wikipedia