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Competition: 2006
Client: Gyeonggi Provincial Government, Korea
Use: museum in prehistoric park
Size: 5.000 m²
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Between rocks and landscape
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The surrounding area is characterized by the overwhelming naturally hilly landscape, which describes the horizon lines and juxtaposes the agricultural patches of the fields. Contour lines converging at the ridge of this plane echo and reveal the existence of a geological substratum, a layer of basalt.
The museum building becomes a mediator among the diverse conditions of the site, while marking a new access to the archaeological park by laying open the layer of basalt. The zone of intervention marks the divide between ridge/field, up/down and archaeological plateau/alluvial fields. The cut into the basalt layer, set on a fixed contour height, follows the gentle curves of the landscape while establishing a new continuum. Intertwined in the path system of the archaeological park, the basalt line becomes a promenade between sky and ground, heaven and earth – a new place to contemplate and view. As if threaded on the established basalt ledge, the museum becomes an inseparable element of the staging of the museum site.
Both the basalt layer and the found prehistoric artefacts are witnesses to the sediments of the site - all found and new elements of the site have the same material origin and substance. The museum conciliates between artefact and raw material, nature of building and nature of basalt sediment, archaeological site and the exhibited objects, authentic site and museological narration, inside and outside.
Designed as a sensual container, enclosed and hermetical it is to provide the necessary environment to exhibit the artefacts. In its spatial relationships, the volume is both an enclosed container and yet oriented to the outside. The slit volume establishes a strong relationship to its immediate context by means of panoramic views and in the associations it evokes. Primal and heavy, it elevates itself above the ground, allowing transparency while the landscape flows through it and articulating the path leading to the plateau.