Incheon Geomdan Museum and Library Cultural Complex

Client: Incheon Metropolitan City

Place: Incheon, South Korea

Date: 2023 Competition

Type: Culture

Area: 20,560 m2

Budget: KRW 91,454,000,000

AZPML

Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Maider Llaguno-Munitxa, Ivaylo Nachev, Ceyda Soyran

Yo2 Architects

Young Joon, Choi Jeong-woo

Our proposal for the Geomdan Museum and Library Cultural Complex aims to integrate the new facilities with two park spaces surrounding the site, by using the building itself to create an ecological bridge between them.  Therefore, we have kept the future building complex as low as possible, simultaneously increasing the public accessibility to the facilities.

The two institutions ―a public library which will provide centralized storage to the library system in the North Incheon region, and an archaeology-themed cultural museum to store the remnants found in Geomdan New Town and Incheon― will be co-located in a single building in order to exploit the synergies between both programs.

The two institutions are located on the two ends of the bent structure. The Museum will be located on the East and the Library on the North-West end.  The common lobby between both institutions will be located on the +25,00 level, on the curved area in the middle, wrapping around the outdoor exhibition space featuring dwellings and tombs. This covered public space will aim to produce synergy between both institutions.

The Library archive is located on B2 at level +18,00, under the Library rooms at level +28,00, and will be visible from the reading rooms. The museum storage is located also on B2 under the Children/Education area of the Museum and features a glazed gallery, accessible to the museum visitors, which will provide an elevated view of the archive as part of the exhibition sequence. The Museum rooms will be located on level +25,00, while the children/cultural facilities are located on the lakeside level at +28,00. The visitor parking (204 cars) will be accessible from the West street and is located in the middle, under the entrance lobby. Additionally, there are two logistic accesses on the two ends of the structure, serving each one of the institutions and providing the staff entrances.

The roof of the building will become a garden at level +37, on the same level of the two land bridges to Park#13 and Park#15, and seamlessly connected through ramps to the lake promenade at Park#14. The roof will be built as an extrusion of concrete vaults. The creases between the vaults will be used to provide deep deposits of soil capable to grow large trees. The presence of the complex will be marked primarily by these large trees, pines, oaks, hackberries,… shielding the roof garden and the ecological corridor on the roof. The building itself will appear as an earthwork built with heavy masonry walls pierced by arches, as a reference to the archaeological theme of the museum.

The building will act to enclose the Southwest corner of Park#14, mirroring the edge of the lake and shielding the park from the noise pollution from the road on the south side. The space left on the Southwest corner will act as an entrance plaza from the outside while the building will embrace a space on the lake side acting as an outdoor exhibition.

Building Character

The building’s expression gravitates between the ambition to become an ecological corridor linking the landbridges at level +37,50 with a natural carpet, and the archaeological theme of the Museum.  The building has an infrastructural character, overgrown with nature. The facades will be clad with local granite stone masonry, reminiscent of ancient defensive walls. The external wall facing South and South-West is mostly opaque and feature a monumental entrance arc, opening to the Southwest Square. The lakeside facades are more open and feature an array of arches which open the Library reading rooms and the Museum’s cultural facilities toward the lake.