National Museum of Korea

New 100,000 sqm museum. Open international competition, 1996

Centrally planned around an open well, the building is served by an underground rail station and parking. Only pedestrian access is visible at park level. The building elements; well, wall, tower, platforms, shell, moat and landscape are distinct and interact. The burial mound-like shell form, in timber lattice shell construction with a stainless steel skin, is intended to draw upon Korean culture. Six groups of references combine to give an enigmatic redolence.
Eye: universal and emphatic organ of sight
Chrysalis: transformation and emergence from protective and sensitive skin.
Earth: gravitas and the idea of a cyclical medium of nourishment and decay.
Well: a physical excavation of the earth, the source of life-giving water.
Strata: geological and historical sequential and hierarchical order.
Yin/Yang: holistic combination of opposites, the juxtaposition of ideas.

Priestman Architects with Buro Happold Engineers and artist, David Watkins