Proposal for the
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WORLD WRITING
Songdo Park. Incheon. South Korea.
The primary design of the project envisages freeing up as much area as possible for public use on the land, transforming it into an open park. For this reason, the architectural design suggests a high floor volume supported by steel cables fixed to a sequence of glued laminated wooden frames, this structure being reinforced by metal columns.
The volume of the set is divided into five distinct blocks: a) Public & Service Block; b) Exhibit Block; c) Education Block; d) Office Block; e) Underground Block. In the latter, the Storage and Research Areas are distributed.
The Public & Service Block is designed to be inviting and welcome visitors, encouraging immersive 4d sensory experiences from the projection mapped onto the walls and ceiling on the top floor. The façade produces a sequence of useful information, announcing temporary exhibitions, etc., through the LED panel installed on the brise soleil, which was designed to be visualized by the moving car or by pedestrians on foot or by bicycle, since the section format was adopted. triangular, directing their faces at favorable angles. The arrival floor of this block was lowered to meet the maximum height requirement of the building, which led to the creation of a public staircase, which is believed to attract the deceleration of daily life and favor the meeting between people, without harming the accessibility of wheelchair users, once it has been intercepted by a comfortable diagonal ramp with a 5% slope. The mezzanine, which rises 35cm from the level of the sidewalk, is accessed by a generous ramp, under which the staircase becomes a grandstand, where people can shelter and relax.
Access to the museum block is via the basement, at the ticket office, from 2 tunnels and elevators, whose hall distributes access to the temporary and permanent exhibitions. The elevators and stairs, as well as the freight elevators, are installed in a concrete structural core, which gives strength to the structure. When this block is suspended, it leaves a large area covered by it free, to which the citizen or visitor has free access as it is openly connected to the Frontal Plaza. In this space, an employe cafeteria was set up, which will also serve museum officials and tourist groups, on certain occasions. Skylights there, which bring light underground, are transformed into benches for free use by all. The sequence of MLC portals, which supports the museum's volume, was designed to allude to the act of leafing through a book and to be seen from afar as an urban landmark, distinguishing itself in the region without losing the balance of the urban image.
The concept of the museum space involves the idea of fluidity and compositional freedom through a unique architectural volume in the shape of a train car or even a nave, certainly alluding to the dissemination of knowledge, through all writing, to the world. Internally unequal heights discriminate areas where exhibition themes can freely occur, as suggested by the reference material: a) World Writings; b) Origin & development; c) Writing's role in culture and society; d) Writing and Recording; e) Characters into Art; f) Creation with characters. Inside this volume, tents, displays and benches can be arranged for the organized exhibition of goods, as well as free spaces for the projection of holograms and distributions of interactive items hanging from the ceiling. The Permanent Exhibits visitation flow is designed to be continuous, starting at the lowest level and ending through the exit at the mezzanine level or vice versa, depending on what the institutional organization determines. The same goes for the Special Exhibit, but on a single level. Future expansions are possible, as the mezzanine extends to the limit of the volume, becoming the entire floor. However, the occupation of the land is already projected close to the maximum allowed, making external expansion impossible. This case can be analyzed by the authorities with the argument that the volume is suspended, which makes the land free for public use and permeability rates are guaranteed by the use of draining pavement.
The educational building has an auditorium that opens in the background to an external audience occupying the grassy field, which brings to the development an image of interactivity and openness to the city, transforming itself into a friendly and inviting equipment for citizens to be able to, there , to promote artistic/cultural events of the organization and civil society's free choice. The external stage façade was designed to receive projection mapped during events or, possibly, on other occasions as informative and stimulating social campaigns such as pink October or blue November, for example. Despite being visually integrated, the access to this block is independent and is connected to the Central Plaza by a ramp under the library's floor. This building also includes: Multi-purpose zone; Seminar room; Lecture room.
Also independent is the access to the Cafeteria and the museum shop so that they can work at their own times, according to their responsible administrators, to serve the external public without impacting the museum's schedule.
The Central Plaza is a place open to the meeting under which is the access to the underground parking, leaving the sidewalk free, as it submerges tangentially to the curb alignment, maintaining the continuity of pedestrian and bicycle circulation routes. Due to the position indicated for this vehicle access, it was planned to move the pedestrian crossing, on the other side of the lane, to the other end of the lot through an elevated walkway.
From this same end of the lot, an architectural volume emerges that resembles the tip of a graphite, alluding to the production tool of universal graphic communication: the pencil; or, still, in another analysis, totems, columns and obelisks that, in remote times, were communication tools of peoples. This out-of-plumb volume, which contains the Office and the Night-duty room, part of the underground rising beyond street level as if piercing the earth, rising to the horizon. The connection with the street and the Research and Storage area is made through walkways and stairs connected to an employee access control volume, where the stair/elevator core is located. Adjacent to it is the parking for employees and buses, as well as loading and unloading access through a ramp that is described at level -7.00m, where the off-load deck is located. This part of the complex is accessed through the side street, distinguishing it from the access of the visiting public who find themselves on the side of the main road. The loading of goods to the exhibition spaces will be done through two large freight elevators that will serve both sides, Special Exhibition and Permanent Exhibition, according to the administrator's determinations.
The complex's architecture was designed to be impressive but, even so, integrated with the image of the place. The choices of construction materials and finishes, such as lawns and draining floors in outdoor areas, wood structure, being a renewable input, photovoltaic panels on the roofs, natural or low-consumption and high-performance lighting, etc., lead to the guarantee of the required sustainability for the project, which is expected to impose itself as an architectural landmark for the city.