National Museum of Korean Literature

Place: Jingwan-dong, Eunpyeong-gu, Seoul, South Korea

Client: Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism of Korea

Date: 2021 Competition

Type: Culture Area: 14.528m2

Budget: 48,496 million KRW

AZPML Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Maider Llaguno-Munitxa, Ivaylo Nachev, Claudia Baquedano, Miguel Bello  

Seoinn Yoocheol Choi

Our proposal for the National Museum of Korean Literature is to build a physical structure that:

1.Provides optimal conditions to preserve the collections while exposing them to the public.

2.Provides a flexible space in which specimens and artifacts related to Korean literature can be accumulated and freely organized to allow the public to access them in multiple ways, (chronological, typological…) without precluding the growth of the collection of artifacts and its organization. The idea of a container of specimens will also provide opportunities for the simultaneous experience of multiple types of materials.

1.Act as a topographical mediation between the Eunpyeong Village and the Bugaksan Park, forming a terrace which will act as a panoramic belvedere, which exposes the exhibits to the public, even before entering the Museum.

2.Create a building with a character which will immediately represent Korean literature and its traditions in the public imagination. We have resorted to design a Hanok-Shed, a home for Korean Literature, where images associated to arcane architectural typologies are updated and evolved.

3.Create a building which will optimizes environmental performance by using a combination of solar collectors and geothermal exchange loops to provide a self-sufficient building in terms of energy consumption, using wood and low-carbon concrete to reduce carbon emissions and embodied energy.

Site Plan Organization The building is encrusted on the hillside, following the topography and creating a hard-paved public belvedere at level +134,40 and a densely vegetated Museum Garden at level +126,00. The faultline between both levels is oriented in a direction NE/SW, produced by a regular structure grid, ideal for the archive structure, that will enable the building to grow toward the SW direction in a second phase. The wedge-shaped Museum Garden will be accessible directly from the Arts Village and provide access to the viewing platform through steps on each side of the “fault”. Vehicular access will be located on the Northernmost corner of the site, at the end of Yeonseo-ro 46-gil. Pedestrian access will be possible from all sides of the plot, on both levels.

Sectional and Programmatic Organization The section of the building is organized by locating the archive in the most protected part of the building, encrusted into the topography at level +126,00. The Archive is formed as a linear volume, with a regular 8,40 x 8,40m grid, which can be easily extended to the SW in future phases. The Archive is shielded from direct sun exposure and climatic variation, using the earth mass as a thermal stabilizer, and the museum spaces and public programs as thermal buffers. The Archive is always visible from the public spaces in the Museum, on the ground level +126,00 and from the Museum Mezzanine at level +130,20, making them into one of the main Museum exhibits.