HanmiGlobal unveils residences for active wealthy seniors

Interior of a show house of Wirye Symponia / Courtesy of HanmiGlobal

HanmiGlobal, Korea’s leading construction project management company, came up with its own solution to cope with the aging population, Tuesday, by unveiling the design of Wirye Symponia, a senior residence combined with a child care center.

The nine-story residential building with four basement floors will open in March next year at the center of Wirye New Town in Seoul’s Songpa District, which is close to large hospitals, parks, shopping malls and subway stations.

Unlike conventional senior residences, the facility will provide various lectures and health care services, as well as catering and cleaning services, for its residents to remain active.

Right next to the residential building will also be another building to be used as a child care center by parents with young children living in the town.

“The combination shows HanmiGlobal’s will to better cope with Korea's low birthrates and aging population,” an official of HanmiGlobal D&I, a property development subsidiary of HanmiGlobal, said during a press tour of model homes.

Wirye Symponia’s 115 apartment units will consist of two sizes: 42-square-meters and 56-square-meters aprtments. Both have a kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom, but the latter will have a second bedroom and a balcony. One of the building’s basement floors will be used as households' storage space.

When entering the show houses, there is a foldable chair in the foyer of the smaller type of the apartment units and a space to sit in the larger apartment unit’s foyer, so that aged residents can put on and take off their shoes more conveniently. In addition, HanmiGlobal D&I installed sliding doors and removed accesibility barriers for wheelchairs.

Inside the model homes of each apartment unit are also multiple emergency bells and safety bars.

“We installed the emergency bells near the floor, in the event that residents who have fallen need help, ” the HanmiGlobal D&I official said. “If they press the bell, the building manager will immediately come to their assistance.”

The residential building’s construction will be finished by the end of this year with residents expected to start living in the facility from March next year.

According to HanmiGlobal D&I, two-people households living in the facility are expected to pay 3.2 million won ($2,300) a month on average, if they pay deposits ranging from 400 million won to 770 million won. The deposit amount depends on the unit size and the amount of monthly rental paid.