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One Continuous Floor from Living Room to Kitchen · Quick-Step’s Water-Resistant Wood Flooring ‘Parquet,’ Designed to Overcome Wood’s Long-Standing Weakness

As construction faces carbon pressures, aging buildings, and labor shortages all at once, startups are stepping forward with new tools and solutions. Hoban Construction identifies these companies, opens real jobsites across its affiliates as testbeds, and connects promising technologies to investment. It has become more than a buyer of technology — it is helping curate and grow the ecosystem around it.

In architecture and interior design, 3D modeling is still largely done by hand. Moulder turns a process that once took days per drawing set into a 3D model and rendering in just five minutes from a 2D CAD upload.

At a hair salon, a new hairstyle is usually left to the imagination until the service is complete. Mirrorroid brings that preview to the mirror, letting customers see their new look before the treatment begins.

Scanning a QR code at a restaurant or hotel is already familiar. But a printed QR code can be copied with a single photo. Arch Seoul moved the QR code onto an e-paper display, where it refreshes at set intervals so copied versions quickly become invalid.

Outside, the temperature hit 36°C. In the middle of a summer gripped by unprecedented heat, a different kind of intensity fills the closed exhibition halls at COEX. KOREA BUILD WEEK, a four-day gathering for the construction and architecture industry beginning August 5, is now taking shape.

You can see plenty on a phone screen. But if you come to , do more: touch the materials, feel the textures, open and close things, test how they work, and ask whatever you want to know. The exhibition hall is still being set up for those encounters with visitors tomorrow.

2026 KOREA BUILD WEEK, Korea’s leading exhibition for construction, architecture, and interiors, opened at COEX in Seoul on Wednesday, August 5. Organized by MESSE ESANG, the exhibition brings together around 600 companies across 1,900 booths, showcasing products and solutions spanning building materials, construction technology, and interiors.

Recent trends in space, construction, and architecture are moving in two directions: faster and easier, or slower and more deliberate. They may seem opposite, but they stem from the same issue — skilled labor is shrinking while labor costs continue to rise. At , held at COEX in Seoul through Saturday, August 8, both trends can be seen side by side, along with the industry’s most focused solutions.