Sub-Urbanism: Museum for Constructing Landscape

Korean Museum of Urbanism + Architecture

International Open Competition

Sejong, South Korea

with JIM (CAN), ALIVEUS Landscape (KOR), Vic Nguyen Design (VTM)

2020

A museum of urbanism and architecture should represent not just the urban fabric of Korea but the long, contingent processes of city-making that created it. In this sense Sejong, and especially the National Museum Complex, presents a unique challenge: sitting on imported fill capping the agricultural flood plain, the site is purpose-built and patently artificial. Within such an artificial landscape, we began by shaping an artificial site to support an architectural artifice housing the artifacts of an urbanizing world. The scene is both unnatural and entirely real, engaged with its context but offering new perspectives toward the broader environment.

Our project exposes and engages this constructed context by excavating the non-ground and emphasizing the autonomous grid that overlies the larger museum complex. The proposal lays bare the artifice of the ground as both mineral and metal. An arcade wrapping the perimeter of the site extends the larger assembly upward to establish a clear threshold into the museum. Permanent exhibition space below frames a durable garden plaza; gallery and ground in dialogue. Exhibited work, itself a representation of the built environment, sits in the remnant space of a volume extracted to challenge the very foundations on which the complex is built.

From this layered ground, a horizontal lantern rises above the museum as a new landmark in the emerging city. Connected to the grid below, a bar of research, education, and multifunction program shifts to open two interior garden courts. A series of intersecting routes present various curatorial experiences. From large openings in public rooms, visitors look out across the river to the mountains and city beyond. A facade of layered glass screens diffuses light, reflects clouds, and dematerializes the museum.