Moon Shin Museum
Gyeonggi-do / South Korea / 2009 (Project)
Sculpture museum without walls set within the landscape
Client: Yangiu Municipality
Net Area: 2,000 m2
Executive Architects: Morph Architects (KR)
Structural Engineer: Buro Happold (UK)
Ron Arad Architects were invited to develop proposals for a museum dedicated to the work of the Korean National Sculptor, Moon Shin. Situated on a hillside site within an hour of Seoul, the project inspired a unique approach to both site and the display of objects.
A question first comes to mind; Perhaps there is something wrong with locking the sculptural work of Moon Shin within an enclosed building, when such a great number of them are clearly designated to be outdoors, to be set within the landscape. This questioning led to an idea that might seem radical to begin with - a museum without walls – but the more we think about it, the more impossible it is to go back to the conventional big pavilion museum concept. Not only does the wall-less museum render a better setting for the work, it is also a more sensible and economic means to avoid creating a big enclosure that requires sealing, insulating, heating, cooling.
Once we warm to the idea of a covered, landscaped sculpture garden which offers different solutions for dealing with weather protection, we are free to produce a heroic building that is purely a glorious cantilevered roof, hovering above and sprouting from the landscape. In its majestic presence, the museum incorporates glazed boxes which provide a haven from the elements, both for visitors and for the more vulnerable sculptures (e.g. wooden ones) and drawings. We are therefore free to invent an architecture that is indeed radically new.
The landscape might recall the morphology of an archaeological site, with a ramped route from the high to the low. It might also recall a sculpture garden, the best examples of which are by Isamu Noguchi. The roof is a two-layer array of V-shaped cantilevered beams allowing natural daylight into the ‘garden’ and also providing protection from and drainage of rain and snow.
