Exhibition Greenhouse, Hwamyeong Arboretum (화명수목원 전시온실)

Hwamyeong is Busan's first public arboretum. The city launched the project in August 2003; basic and detailed design ran until November 2005, then groundwork, construction and landscaping from December 2005 to June 2010, according to the official page of the municipal green-spaces office, which dates the opening to March 2011. The site covers 110,653 m² at a cost of 16.4 billion won according to the local press; Korean Wikipedia dates its registration as a public arboretum to February 2013. In March 2011 the daily Busan Ilbo noted that the arboretum, not yet officially open, had just two buildings: the exhibition greenhouse and the management building.

Both buildings come from the 2008 architectural competition, won by the firm Siban (시반건축사사무소). The greenhouse was cited in 2010 among the seven best completed buildings of the Busan Architecture Grand Exhibition (부산건축대전), according to the 2011 article. The Buk-gu district office gave 934 m² in 2011, Korean Wikipedia 943 m²; the same office counted 131 species, whereas texts from 2018 to 2022 report 250 to 260.

The greenhouse rests on a steel frame closed by a glass curtain wall. According to the Busan Ilbo (2011), its footprint is about 879 m², its height 10 m and its maximum length about sixty metres. The plan avoids both the rectangle and the triangle: the building bends like a bow without copying one, and its roof is folded rather than flat, which makes the right-hand end seem, by optical illusion, to lift. An architect from the firm explains that the team looked for a natural line, that of branches scattered over the ground, and the mullions of the glass wall, staggered against one another, recall to the journalist the markings of a leaf. The choice of glass is meant to show that the plants inside are no different from those outdoors.

A circulation ramp, the Eco Way, lets visitors enter from outside and look down on the plants; its slope is about ten degrees and its width reaches 3 m in places, which the journalist finds a little generous. The interior stairs also serve as teaching, display and resting areas. A visitor in 2018 describes a route on two levels, with a wooden deck and palms whose fronds reach the ceiling.

At the opening, the district office counted 131 species and about 7,300 plants from tropical and warm-temperate regions in the greenhouse, together with native plants of Jeju Island, arranged in areas for foliage plants, palms, climbers and carnivorous plants. A 2019 article mentions about 260 species, among them banana, coffee and two species cited by their Korean names, the 여인초 and the 황근.

Visitor accounts also mention a monstera, a rex begonia and a Chinese lantern plant (꽈리), as well as tall palms whose crowns are best seen from the upper level. The house is heated to protect the subtropical plants: the Buk-gu district blog notes that in winter condensation clouds the windows and the air is far milder than outside. Beyond the glass, the arboretum holds, according to the Busan archives, more than a thousand species (1,089 species and 189,917 plants on the date of that record).

The greenhouse stands on the arboretum's central square, opposite the management building that houses the forest exhibition hall. In spring a tulip show is held in front of it; in 2019 the Kookje counted 4,000 plants of five varieties. Admission is free.

The daily Kookje (2019) reckons a full visit takes two hours and recalls the three suggested routes of 40, 60 and 80 minutes (850, 1,300 and 1,700 m). From Hwamyeong station (line 2), exit 6 leads to a neighbourhood minibus (line 1) of about twenty minutes; the small car park fills quickly at weekends. Nearby, the west gate of the Geumjeongsan fortress lies less than 500 m from the arboretum, according to the Busan Ilbo.