National Museum Complex

Location: Sejong City, South Korea

Client: Administrative City of Korea

Date:  2016 Competition

Area: 190.000,00m2

Budget: Undisclosed

Team credits:
AZPML: Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Maider Llaguno-Munitxa, Guillermo Fernandez-Abascal, Ivaylo Nachev, Amaya Luzarraga, Paolo Toldo, Taeyoon Kim, Blanca Munoz, Federica Campeotto, Andrea Sanchez

Renders: SBDA

The project for the new National Museum Complex in Sejong City brings forward questions that few other complexes have faced in the past. Only places like the Washington’s Mall or Vienna’s Museum Kwartier contain such a concentration of museistic infrastructure.

The specificity of these Museum Complexes is that, unlike most of the traditional museums, they are less embedded into the urban fabric, and therefore they need to create sufficient critical mass to turn themselves into a destination.

The new National Museum Complex in Sejong City will be surrounded by water on two sides, and otherwise embedded inside the future Central Park of Sejong City. Due to the absence of a neighbouring urban fabric, the future Complex will have to be designed as an integral part of the park itself.

Our proposal has been structured so that it can be built with the maximum flexibility, making every museum an independent piece that can be built separately, rather than being bound to build the whole complex for it to work.

To obtain the necessary density, we have laid out the musea along the riverfront, which becomes the structuring spine of the complex. The buildings are placed in a double row, pointing toward the riverfront promenade, and staggered to create a continuous façade toward the river.

The intention is that the new Complex will be complete at any point, regardless of how many of the Museums are eventually completed, and it will work as a sophisticated park environment. The only condition is that they are completed in the designed sequence of adjacency.