The site for the Korea Investment Trust Gaepo Branch (now Korea Investment & Securities Daechi PB Center) is located in a commercial area surrounded by high-rise apartment blocks, with the 40-meter-wide Nambu Beltway — an arterial road running east–west through southern Seoul — passing along its front. Within the design vocabulary developed for a series of Korea Investment Trust branches that sought to express endless expansiveness and openness toward the street, the Gaepo Branch project begins by absorbing the environmental characteristics of its site.

First, the open, circular space of the banking hall on the first and second floors serves as a natural connector between the two levels and qualitatively enhances the client reception area. In particular, the cylindrical volume forms a visual focal point in the flow of through traffic, together with the stepped masses resulting from the way financial institutions typically allocate their internal spaces, so that it not only functions as a landmark but also injects vitality into the surrounding neighborhood. The architectural language — spatial and massing expressions that exploit the material properties of stone and glass, horizontal bands and moldings that emphasize horizontality and expand the sense of scale — constitutes a set of shared motifs that have been applied to other Korea Investment Trust branch office buildings.