The Seoul National University Museum is defined by its siting on the side of a small hill, close to the entrance of the university. The building's form was conceived as a basic rectangular box, sliced diagonally by the incline of the hill.



This form is then raised up on a small central core – the only point of contact with the ground – so the building is nearly all cantilever, extending up and down the hill, following the topography precisely and appearing to hover above it. The museum both defines and defeats the hill, and, by keeping the ground beneath it largely free, becomes an attractive conduit between the university campus and the outside community.

Both outside and inside, free-flowing circulation was key to the thinking behind the building. The central core is an atrium with a square-spiral staircase connecting the various program areas: exhibition, education, library, and operations.



The educational spaces – the lecture hall and auditorium – exploit the slope formed by the slice for their tiered seating. The library inhabits the structural core of the building. The exhibition space, being the primary function, inhabits the entire top floor.



But it is also able to invade the educational spaces below by means of an angular ramped circulation path; the use of materials in these spaces also signals the potential continuity in the program. Elsewhere, materials vary, and include concrete flooring, plywood paneling, and translucent plastic paneling over fluorescent lighting. The museum's façade is also translucent, revealing the structural steel truss work beneath.



Type Cultural - Museum, Library Educational
Location San 56-1, Sillim-dong, Gwanak-gu Seoul, 151-742 Korea, Republic of  
Status: Completed 2005
Location: Seoul, South Korea
Site: Seoul National University Campus
Program: 4,478m2: Exhibition, Education, Library and Operations
Client: Seoul National University Museum

OMA/Rem Koolhaas

Pilgrimage Chapel, In the Mountains North of Seoul



collapse  Type Religious - Chapel
Location Seoul
Number of stories 4 
Site size : 20000 sqft 
Site type :  rural 

Andrew MacNair

Located in Paju Book City, the building is “Bookshelf Type,” where the area contains various publishing houses, and buildings, restricted to four stories, appear as volumes, or books, along the shelf or street.

Open Books publishes a variety of translated books, from Russian Literature to German Philosophy. The initial concept for the space is derived from the act of translation; two parallel lines, ie languages, which appear to converge at a single point, but never actually meet. The interiors of each bar building are sectionally diverse, organized by ramps connected at differing levels.

From the Han River on one side to the Simhak Mountain on the other, each bar building is organized through folded walls to produce continuous perception and circulation where enclosed bar spaces are layered with interstitial voids. The two bar buildings are composed of an artificial landscape connecting the varying levels; the unbuilt Center for Translators has circulation centered around a folded translucent glass screen, where light penetrates as one moves through. The built office building is navigated through a folding concrete wall which wraps the edges of the structure as the subject engages the folded boundary.



Type Commercial - Factory
Location : Paju Korea, Republic of  
Building status : built in 2005 
Site size : 1518 m2 
Building area : 727 m2 
A project by: himma studio, Jun Sung Kim, Hailim SUH

himma studio

The competition was to design an Integrated Research & Development Center for a Korea-based consumer products company. Our design premise was that the community is paramount: its relationship to the individual, institution, and the city can create a meaningful space.



Accordingly, the form of the building itself creates a common central space, a shared attribute for the occupants and larger community. Its central, four-level garden is an activity zone where both people and science are on display: a theatre of creativity activated by the dynamic nature of the client's brand, and a direct symbolic reference to its history in the food industry.



The site lies between a green belt of native forest and agricultural fields to the north and east, and an active downtown to the south and southwest. In the site's natural condition, the existing hillside had gradually sloped into the property over about 30 meters of elevation. Subsequent intervention had then created a steep cliff face as the physical northern backdrop to the new development, presenting a challenge and an opportunity to utilize the site's southern exposure in the embrace of this abrupt topographical transition.



Presenting a substantial image to the highway, the building opens up to a welcoming entrance court, a gesture to the local community. In the entrance court at the south-facing front of the building, a water feature provides for a variety of social activities, and represents architecture’s re-creation of the land that it occupies.



Vertically, the building is tripartite: The base contains the building entrance and common functions; The middle, or plinth, contains the cafeteria; and the top is the research tower. These three elements are pinned through a series of collaboration/circulation zones between floors, providing a controlled source of natural light into the heart of the building, and continuing the reminder of man's relationship to nature, begun by the multi-level garden below

Type Educational - Research Facility

Location : Gwanggyo New City, Geonggi-do Korea, Republic of  
Client : Confidential  
Building status : concept proposal 
Site type : suburban 

HDR Architecture

First Place: Kyu Ho Chun, Kenta Fukunishi, Jae Young Lee (USA)

This project examines a possible solution to the multiple environmental problems we might have in the year 2050. If we continue with the same year to year increment in air pollutants it will no longer be safe to breathe in the outdoors without a filtering device. Neo Arc is the solution proposed by a group of architects, engineers, scientists, and developers that are studying how to integrate the latest green technologies in major residential and commercial developments.

Winner Hotels and Tourism Project MIPIM 2009
Phoenix Island Villa Condo & Club House (other name : Phoenix Island Hillius & Agora)



Concept statement:
The site of Phoenix Island, Seopjikoji, is blessed with the nature as the entire site may seem like a complete canvas merged into the natural landscape and offers unobstructed views and access to the ocean.



As a resting space of temporary stay, the villa condo offers variety of views along the differentiated outdoor pedestrian passages carefully set in motion to prevent potential impairment by the vehicle circulation. These views extend along the outdoor landscape to blur the limit of planned from natural scenery. This imagery of juxtaposition directly superpose and continue deep into the core of interior space of the condominium as if the nature is containing the entire built and unbuilt space of the project.



The outdoor passage of Phoenix Island is designed to conjure up the notion of “returning to nature” and offers unique experience of “relaxed promenade” through which many virtuous landscape features such as villa deck directly open to ocean views, granite stone walls , a stroll over gentle slope, discrete and slow passage way create a sublime serenade of blended panorama.



The villa condos carefully positioned on the naturally undulating slope also shares the same notion of “returning to nature” as all of villas offers completely open panoramic ocean views along the coast. The horizontal terrain is planted with native vegetations and trees in order to surround the villas, giving them stronger impression of natural immersion for the visitors.

Seogwipo-si, Republic of South Korea
Architect: Samoo Architects and Engineers
Club House Design Architect: Mario Botta Architetto
Developer: Bokwang Jeju Co., Ltd.

Mario Botta Architetto