Eco-Conscious Proposal for Korean Museum by AZPML and UKST

AZPML and UKST proposes eco-conscious design for ‘Korean Museum of Urbanism and Architecture’ design competition in Sejong, South Korea

Project: Korean Museum of Urbanism and Architecture

Design Team:
AZPML, UKST

Location:
South Korea

Typology:
Museums

Site Area: 17,050 m²

Images: AZPML, UKST

AZPML and UKST have won the ‘Korean Museum of Urbanism and Architecture’ design competition in Sejong, South Korea, held by the National Agency for Administrative City Construction.

The team’s wining proposal is aimed to become both an ecological and a cultural adventure. As per the team, nearly 70% of global carbon emissions and 66% of energy consumption are caused by the rapid urbanization. As a proposal for a Museum of Architecture and Urbanism, the design team wants to address this problem through design strategies.

The proposal plans to exemplify the best practices in the industry in terms of ecological and environmental performances. The project will reuse steel girders of decommissioned infrastructure to build an oversized scaffolding to hold real fragments of architecture.

The team aims to set a model for the best practices in the industry by exemplifying urban mining, the preservation of resources, the reduction of embodied energy, carbon emissions, construction waste and pollution. The design takes elements from Korean architecture style like the stepped eaves of traditional Hanok rooks while also reflecting urban transformation of the country.

The building provides a generous canopy over the public space as a shield from rain and sun while providing a monumental access to the building. The lobby opens onto a central void linking visually to the temporary galleries and the accessible storage spaces above. Two vertical circulation cores covered with stones from historical Korean fortresses are located around this Piranesian Space.

With distinctive architectural infrastructure AZPML and UKST plans to create spaces that can facilitate curation of full-scale architectural fragments, and to always ‘remain under construction’.

The column-free spaces around the North sunken courtyard will house the Permanent Collection, laid out as a ring. Two sets of stands link the two levels of the Permanent Collection, creating topographies for casual presentations and events in the gallery which will introduce a theatrical effect into the exhibition spaces, offering an elevated perspective over the exhibits on the lower level.

The building enclosure is designed as a high-performance floor-to-ceiling glazed membrane, with embedded heat recovery ventilation vents and a layer of electrochromic glass to control daylight ingress (66%-1% Light Transmittance).

The building’s environmental conditioning systems have been designed to perform mostly through radiation and natural ventilation. a decentralized mechanical ventilation system will be used. The system will also offer much safer performance in respect to the management of volatile organic compounds, such as covid-19.

Using exclusively dry assembly methods, the building construction sequence of structures primarily though a piling sequence of prefabricated elements. The architects aim to make KMUA a global example of reusing and recycling in the building industry. The building will strictly follow the Design for Disassembly doctrine, which ensures that the building’s material resources remain available at the end of its life-cycle.

Project Images