What is Up with that Tower
As per the poll has shown, many have wanted to know what is going on with HUNTR/X's tower. I have briefly considered their penthouse being their dorm, however, that got thrown out the window when you think about why the hell an apartment complex – even luxurious ones, would put up their tenants' logo on the side of their building? For (1), that thing's expensive to maintain, (2) that just feels like a violation of privacy and (3) that's a bright neon sign advertising to sasaengs to come and sneak into the building to stalk the girls or cause disruptions.
Also this humongous closet that is full of outfits that are definitely performance outfits and not regular clothes.
Idols don't normally get to keep or take home their performance outfits because (1) Those are technically company property not theirs, and (2) Normally, a single comeback can have as many as 5-7 varieties of outfits unique to their comeback, their MV outfits may also be used for their live stages. Idol groups rarely ever use the same set of outfits for more than an era because each era is supposed to be unique in their concept and their performance outfits have to reflect that unless their company doesn't have the money for several outfits.
So let's go with the tower being the company building!
[Note: This whole thing is entirely my headcanon and is in no way, shape, or form, canonical at all to what we know about it so far. I would not be surprised if this is disproven and thrown in the trash when the sequel arrives]
This tower is based off of the Lotte World Tower – a mix-use skyscraper based in Olympic road, Sincheon neighborhood (also known as Jamsil 4 & 6 neighborhoods), Songpa District, Seoul, owned by Lotte Corpooration (yes, as in the confectionery brand that made Pepero, Milkis, and Koala March). The tower is approximately 555 meters tall with 123 floors, but apparently the Huntr/x tower is somehow taller?.
I decided to torture myself and measured the tower myself. How? Well, first I had to get a measurable shot of the tower because we don't actually get to see the tower's full size. This shot of the girls is the best I could get.
Then as the giraffe of the group, I picked Mira to be the measuring tool to make it slightly more bearable for me, so now I had to find Mira's height. Using this shot of them in the train where Mira is standing next to the door (with a little behind thus making her a little smaller in mind). The door is like 190-200cm tall from what I remember using my height and measured Mira's height against it, and added 7 milimeters to just give her a little boost but keep in mind that 170cm is the real number.
As anyone with the ability to count can tell, that is nowhere near as tall as Lotte World Tower. In fact that is only 65.71% of Lotte Tower's height. Of course, there is a very large possibility that I miscounted somewhere and the fact that animation is rarely one to one when it comes to proportion so let's just discard the 5 days I spent calculating all this and just say the Huntr/x tower is 575 meters tall and had 127 floors [Lotte's height per floor = 555/123 = 4.51m per floor; Huntr/x tower's number of floors = 555/4.51 = 127.49 = 127 floors]
Also here's the width of the building
[Note: This is very rough calculations and I am possibly entirely wrong, but I did not spend nearly a week calculating all this just to throw all that in the trash]
Now, while the Huntr/x tower being bigger than Lotte World Tower is impressive, I would say it is Very Excessive for an entertainment company. For scale, these are the heaquarters of the Big 4 (SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and HYBE), literally nowhere near Lotte World Tower level of tall
As for why that is, it's because most entertainment companies commonly have:
Office spaces for management and production
Cafes (For fans to visit and eat in)
Of course, all companies are unique and might have more than what I listed but as you can see, while that is a lot, that is not nearly enough to justify having the 6th tallest building in the world.
But I have an idea [Note: This is the part that gets very headcanon-y so beware]:
In an older post of mine, I proposed that Celine could've started and owned Huntr/x's company after regaining her footing and reputation in the industry as both a songwriter/producer and an artist. If she did, what if the reason the company has this giant ass tower as their headquarter is because almost all their company's divisions is in that thing?
When it comes to the growth of an entertainment, they usually start out as either one thing:
[A] Label – the entity that produces the creative output (songs, MVs, etc.).
[B] Agency – the entity that recruits and manages the talents.
[C] Company – the parental entity that handles business and finances, providing funding and infrastructure.
[D] A 3-in-1 company that fulfills all three roles.
An entertainment (by entertainment, in this case, it's music) company often started as either one of A, B, or C, then when they start, but as they grow, they would often evolve into an 3-in-1 company.
If they started out or became a 3-in-1, when they grow even larger, they'll diverge into divisions. What are divisions in kpop companies? Divisions are createdd primarily made to divide and distribute the workload of the company that the parent company might not be able to handle on its own without potentially deluding the quality. (I have examples of what divisions can look like for the girls' company but I'm not gonna talk about it unless someone asks)
What if for the tower, not only is it the base of the company but the office of all of its divisions?
Land is incredibly expensive in Seoul especially in Gangnam, Seocho, and Songpa (where the tower is located) it's like around ₩18M–₩32M per m² now so presumably, the rationale is that they'll save more money if the company only buys one plot of land rather than multiple land for multiple buildings around Seoul. Will that actually save them money? If we're looking at this in a realistic financial sense, not really — the land by itself is a massive investment, add to that 6-7 years of construction construction and then the constant maintenance, mechanicals and utilities expenses, but again, there is literally no good logical reason for this tower to exist beyond to replace Lotte World Tower and be the girls' super awesome dorm.
And even if they allocated the spaces for the divisions, the penthouse and the mechanicals, 127 floors is still a lot so what else can be allocated to that space? They could put out some of the spaces as offices for rent. Land is expensive and a fixed asset which means a large investment for mid-tier or smaller companies looking to set base in Songpa that they might not be able to see through if they don't make enough revenue to recover the cost spent on the land + construction + infrastructure, so hypothetically, it would be much cheaper for these companies to rent an office space instead because they get the space for the benefit of being able to have their address in Jamsil but not at the fulll price of the total initial costs the land owner (in this case, the girls' company) spent while the company who does own the building would get a monthly payment, helping them pay off the likely debt they obtained having this tower built.
Other idols and singers in the company could also be living in the tower, mainly because it's a bit uhh iffy if only the girls live in the tower by which I mean, it would smell a bit too much like nepotism and favoritism on Celine's part if the girls get a 42m penthouse all to themselves while the company's other artists go home to regular (even if it's a bit upscale) apartment complexes which could realistically get Celine and the company accusations and backlash from fans of their other artists regardless of Huntr/x being the company's golden goose. But then again, this is the universe where kpop fans are much kinder so, no one could also care that much to complain about that.
So here's my general idea for what's in there [Warning: Very headcanon-y]:
Starting at the bottom, we have podium 1, besides anchoring the tower. one could probably function as the atrium [note: I forgot the actual word for it so this is just a placeholder term] where people can come in, maybe there's like cafes and merch stores for fans to visit (yes, that's a thing) and the other as a possible parking garage but only because I think adding an additional underground floor is going to add to construction cost which is probably already astronomical at this point, let's just save the underground floor for utilities and infrastructure like power generators, emergency generators, water tanks, server rooms, etc.
Podium 2 could possibly be an extended roof for podium 1 and that's likely the case but I think it being a multi-purpose hall where things like auditions, conferences, and press release by the company can be held here but that's just my opinion.
I already explained what the rest are so that's that. The only thing I could say is that man, their company cafeteria has got to be a fancy buffet style if the company is already this extra about their building.
That's it, it's up to you on how you would structure the tower in the specifics because I am not going through the torture of making a floor plan for each floor. Am I crazy enough to try to? Haha yeah, but haha no. Just no.
Also, I kind of like to think these floors below belong to Mira and Zoey because I think they deserve their own balconies too. Also the one below them might be Celine's. IDK, you decide.
Again, this is all just speculation on my part so you can agree or disagree or modify this if you want.
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