The Seoul Branch Building
Mihn Hyun-jun and mp_art architects (born 1959) · 2010 to 2013
From Samcheong-ro the museum barely announces itself. A low wall of pale terracotta tiles, a glass entrance and a name sign are all you see at first, with the roofs of the Joseon dynasty Jongchinbu halls showing above the trees to the right. The architect Mihn Hyun-jun won the competition in twenty ten with a scheme that refused to compete with Gyeongbokgung Palace next door. Instead of a landmark, he proposed a group of modest blocks joined by courtyards, most of the building underground, and the whole site left open so that people can walk through it.
Look at the cladding as you approach. The tiles are a warm grey that picks up the granite of the palace walls and the mountains behind; the glass is set in deep frames so that the volumes read as solid. Inside, the halls are top lit and the circulation runs around the courtyards, so you are never far from daylight or a view of Bukaksan. The plan borrows the logic of a Korean house, where rooms open onto a madang rather than onto corridors, and the museum describes itself as a place where art, history and daily life overlap.
The site had a difficult past. For decades it was the headquarters of the Defense Security Command, the military intelligence agency associated with the dictatorships of the nineteen seventies and eighties, and before that the hospital of Gyeongseong Medical College under Japanese rule. Returning it to public use as an art museum was a political decision as much as a cultural one. The building opened on the thirteenth of November twenty thirteen and has become one of the most visited museums in Korea.
Did You Know? The architect deliberately kept the building lower than the palace walls and put most of the floor space underground so that the museum would not overshadow Gyeongbokgung.
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