Songwon Art Center | Mass Studies

Buk-Chon, where Songwon Art Center is located, is one of the few areas that were less affected by the heavy wave of development has been sweeping through) Korea since the fifties. The townscape is based on an irregular network of streets that weave through the area, where Han-Ok is the dominating architectural typology. During the past 10 years Buk-Chon has seen lots of buzz primarily caused by the newfound interest of the public on the traditional townscapes. Han-Oks(traditional Korean houses) have become a subject of admiration again, and many commercial/ cultural businesses have been brought into the area to take advantage of this setup. In this social context, it is consensual that any new development in the area intrinsically faces the challenge to simultaneously conserve existing values, and contribute in a new way to what already is. Not surprisingly, with our project we faced numerous restrictions and conditions that were inherent to the site. The design development process took an unusual amount of time – as we neither wanted this project to become a compromise to the restrictions nor a mere negotiation between the contextual obligations. The design is a result of optimizing the parameters, sensitively reacting to the surrounding and simultaneously developing a rigorous logic. A Pre-determined Shape The site is an irregularly shaped piece of land, roughly 297㎡ in size, sitting in an entrance location to the Buk-Chon area when approached from the city center. The two adjacent roads meet in a sharp angle, with the main street sloping up towards the site. These situations give this small plot an unusually strong recognizability. The massing of the building is largely limited by two conditions – the shape of the plot determined the plan of the building, and the adjacently located House of Yoon-Bo-Sun, a cultural heritage site, determined the elevation of the building to be cut in an angle in relations to sightline conservation. The volume trapped in these restrictive borders could only contain roughly two thirds of the maximum buildable floor area above ground (90% out of max. allowed 150% FAR). Therefore, much of the exhibition program had to be located below ground-level. The resulting building is three floors below ground level and two floors above. The bottom two floors are used as an exhibition space, the semi-underground B1 level as parking, and the top two floors house a commercial restaurant and other social functions. Structure - Silent Acrobat Another condition with the site was the parking requirement – 7 spots needed to be provided within the plot area. The only way to suffice this condition was to designate a semi-underground level that is made accessible from ground level through the use of a piloti scheme. We had to come up with a structural scheme that simultaneously lets us fit everything within the relatively small site and also lift the building up. By making the piloti structure out of two triangular walls, forming half a pyramid, we were able to also house the entrance and staircase leading into the main space below ground within the structural element. With the exception of the sloping roof, the aboveground mass is generally represented in a set of strictly horizontal or vertical concrete planes, forming a hard shell-like unibody structure. The Mass is then balanced on the aforementioned ‘half pyramid’ on one side, and a leaning column on the other. This composition allows the building to be seen as performing a ‘silent acrobatic act,’ slightly floating above ground – while still staying close to it. Vertigo Moment, Two Windows at the Corner In section, the building can be seen as two programs separated by the parking area – the social function of the restaurant above, and exhibition spaces below. As the sharp corner of the site is approached by pedestrians, one encounters two acrylic windows each revealing one of these two spaces – a curved, seamless window to the top, revealing the 7-11m high space to the above, and a triangular window within the base of the pyramid reveals the 8m space below, resulting in a sudden unexpected moment of vertigo as the entire height of the building (some 19 meters) suddenly presents itself. Design team Mass Studies: Zongxoo U, Yoonhwan Kim, Youngjoon Chung Joungwon Lee, Daeun Jeong, Hyunjung Kim, Sanghoon Lee, Songmin Lee Structural engineering TEO Structure MEP Engineer HANA Consulting & Engineers Lighting Engineer Newlite Landscape design Soltos Landscaping