International practice Arch(e)type has taken part in the international design competition for a new city museum in Pohang, South Korea. The architects set most of the building into a coastal hill. Visitors walk down a series of ramps, going deeper into the hill and further back into the city’s history.
Why Pohang needs a museum
Pohang is a port city on the east coast of South Korea. It has several museums, but each one covers a narrow subject, and there is still no place that tells the full story of the city. As a result, about 90% of the archaeological finds made in Pohang, some 30,000 objects, are kept in other parts of the country. The city wants to bring this heritage back, put it on display and pass the region’s history on to future generations.
The museum also has a role in tourism. The city plans to link it with nearby attractions, such as the national marine park on the Homi Peninsula and the historic Japanese houses of Guryongpo, and to make Pohang a destination for history and culture on Korea’s east coast.
The competition
Pohang City launched the international competition on 8 June 2026. The 15,142 m² site is a wooded hill above the sea in Yeonorang Seonyeo Theme Park, in the Donghae-myeon district.
The brief asked for a museum of 7,640 m². The site lies in a natural green zone, so the building could have no more than four floors. Everything else was left to the architects. The programme included permanent galleries, a temporary exhibition hall and a children’s gallery.
A legend of a fisherman and a weaver
The park takes its name from one of Pohang’s best-known stories. A fisherman named Yeonorang was carried out to sea on a rock and taken to Japan. His wife Seonyeo went to look for him. She found his shoes on the shore, climbed onto the same rock, and it carried her to Japan too. After they left, the sun and moon over the kingdom of Silla lost their light. The light came back only after a ritual performed with silk that Seonyeo had woven.
“The park is named after this legend, and for us it became a fitting metaphor for the project,” says Ilya Filippov, lead concept architect at Arch(e)type. “Two people leave by sea on a rock, and the light disappears with them. That is why we placed two volumes on the hill that look like stones, and inside the museum, daylight guides the way.”
The design
The museum is made up of two buildings. A small entrance building stands at the foot of the hill, next to the car park. It houses a café, a shop, a library, classrooms and offices. Its ground floor is clad in rough stone and looks like part of the slope, while the upper floors are fully glazed. From here, a path climbs through the pine trees to the main building on the ridge.
Three of the main building’s four floors are set into the slope. From the top of the hill, visitors see only a single glass floor under a wave-shaped roof.
“We didn’t want to fight the hill,” says Ilya Filippov. “From above you see a light pavilion, and the museum opens up to you little by little as you walk down.”
The lobby is on the top floor. From there, ramps lead visitors down through the permanent galleries to the earliest periods of the city’s history. The ramps are inspired by the covered corridors that run around courtyards in traditional Korean architecture. Inside the building, they continue the path through the pine grove. There is not a single step along the whole route.
Glass facades open views to the sea and bring daylight into the galleries. On the upper floors, light also comes in through round light wells in the roof: the sun and moon of the legend.
After passing through the whole history of the city, from ancient times to the present day, visitors return to the lobby where they started.
Storage rooms, conservation studios and the loading area are on the lower levels. Service vehicles reach them by a separate road and never cross paths with visitors.
The building has a steel frame on a concrete base cut into the slope. The facade has its own separate structure of slender round columns.
Project data
Status: Competition entry, International Design Competition for Pohang Museum
Client: Pohang City
Location: Yeonorang Seonyeo Theme Park, Donghae-myeon, Nam-gu, Pohang, South Korea
Category: Museum
Site area: 15,142 m²
Gross floor area: 8,011 m²
Year: 2026
Images: © Arch(e)type
Design team
Daria Belyakova, founder and principal architect of Arch(e)type
Rostislav Dekh, CEO and chief architect of the project
Ilya Filippov, lead concept architect
Elizaveta Gubskaya, lead concept architect
Ksenia Vorobyeva, chief project architect
Anna Varankina, architect
Platon Rogov,Yana Lobankova, Regina Sokolova, architects
Angelina Lokteva,Adelina Butakhina,Anna Makoveeva, junior architects
