Language

SONGPA BOOK MUSEUM

Location
songpa-gu
Date
2016.07
Scale
B1, 2FL
Gross Floor Area
6,211㎡
Type
Commercial Facility
Awards
 

Situated inside the Seokchon Alley Market, in Garak-dong, Songpa-gu, a sparsely populated urban area in Seoul. The Songpa Book Museum posits itself as the first public museum to be established in the South Korea under the theme “Connecting Books with the People”. Beyond the functions of education/preservation of the museum, it emphasises that the museum serves as the medium to connect the past with the present, people with people, as well as create a space encourages communication and encounters between generations, families and communities.
An essential function of the museum, the book storage is designed to be open and to give visitors a firsthand look at how the artifacts being managed and preserved. Instead of museum exhibition display facilities, the first floor of the museum consists of the leisure and cultural facilities which provides access to the kid’s studios, children’s experience education rooms, and café, given the experience, familiarity and comforts of daily life to the visitors.
The second floor offers all the visitors access to reading, printing, and book-related period/culture contents. With a broad range of uses including permanent and special exhibition rooms, author’s rooms and media library, the museum is enhancing its basic role, becoming a place, which allows people to think more deeply about the value and meaning of books. The Harmony Hall, a central space, connecting the first and second floor visually and spatially, also creates a tangibly difference spatial experience where readings, lectures, events and resting place, all necessary to enable this kind of building to function and filled by the users.
The homogeneous mass, which resembles a bookshelf immersed in the green park. The voids connected to the interior circulation, affording panoramic views over the landscape, offers surprisingly open views through the entire building. The delicate vertical shift of louvers of the façade associated with a concept of layering bookshelves, which indicates that it is a museum that continually evolving towards the future and communicates constantly with its surroundings in accordance with time and angle.
In an era where the average yearly reading volumes of less than 10 books per person, the Songpa Book Museum is expected to reflect the value and meaning of books, providing a resting place and becoming a representative cultural space in Songpa-gu, which promotes human harmony.