丨韩国闻庆市丨Studio Heech

Architects:Studio Heech

Area:1148m²

Year:2025

Photographs:Jang Mi

Lead Architects:Heechan Park

Category:Museums & Exhibit

Design Team:Teawook Jin, Youngdae Yoo, Yurim Kim, Seonwoo Choi, Heechan Park

General Constructing:Kyubong Lee, Architerre

Structural Engineer:CPA

MEP:Kikwang eng

City:Mungyeong-si

Country:South Korea

Text description provided by the architects. The newly renovated museum celebrates the work of Bongju Lee, a traditional Korean bronzeware 'Bangjja Yugi' artisan. The museum, which has been transformed into a 'buildings within a building' concept, consists of a new building of newly inserted rammed earth while retaining the existing building as it is.

Fake 'Han-ok', A Korean traditional House – The existing building was originally used as an archive for Bong-ju Lee's traditional bronzeware works 'Bangjja Yugi'. The old building is a steel-concrete structure, but the exterior is made to look like a 'hanok,' a Korean traditional house, with painted fake wooden elements made of concrete. There has been a trend in modern architecture in Korea since modernization to make houses look like traditional Korean houses made of wooden filigree structures, even though they are built with reinforced concrete structures.

Buildings within a building – The building structure and interior and exterior finishes along the exterior walls of the existing building are retained intact, while two new independent architectural chambers made of rammed earth and a steel staircase for vertical circulation are newly placed inside the existing building. Each exhibition space is divided into Bong-ju Lee's works, like daily ware, sacred religious objects, and musical instruments. Visitors encounter the beautiful bronzeware objects as they walk through the existing building and the newly added rammed earth chambers. And they experience an architecturally unique relationship between the old existing building and the newly created one, between honest expression of materials and pretending to be a real structure and materials. Rammed Earth and its own materiality. "It needs to be beaten more to shine like gold."

Traditionally, Lee Bong-ju's 'Bangjja Yugi' bronzeware is not made by casting, but is made by beating it by hand. A large block of iron called 'baduk' is made, and 11 craftsmen work together to hammer it to make shape. The process of making Lee's bronzeware is considered a kind of artistic act, and the process of making rammed earth walls resembles this.

It has a structure that combines a wooden frame and thick rammed earth walls, and the structural frame is made using structural laminated wood (Gluelam), and the space between them is filled with rammed earth. The structural timber frame also serves as a formwork for ramming the earth.

The materials used are primitive local materials such as rammed earth, wood, iron, and concrete, and the properties and textures of the materials are revealed purely as they are. The exterior, interior, and floor finishing materials of the existing building were reused as much as possible, and to control the natural light coming into the interior, the windows of the existing building were fitted with wooden shutters, and the exterior garden and interior space are connected through newly created openings.

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