Round Sky and Angular Ground
The phrase, “The sky is round and the ground is angular.” is an old-saying found in the Chinese astronomic book, Zhou bi suan jing. Ancient Fareast Asians acknowledged the boundary between the sky and buildings as curves. For that reason, traditional Korean buildings have distinctively curved roof lines. We took a philosophical approach in terms of designing building rather than the curved form itself.
Filling the Triangular Site
The shape of the site is unusually triangular which dissects a road that meets its one sharp corner. Sitting right in front of the Mungyeong City Hall and the Mojeon Park, the site open to outdoor spaces in the neighborhood. Even though the site is located at the entry of the village and stands out in terms of its form and location, it had been abandoned for a long time and left like a traffic island.
The program the client request was retail shops mixed with multi-family housing. Along the traffic and passersby’s flows on the both sides of the site, the retails shops are placed on the ground floor without interfering the flows. The shape of the site is an outcome of the city axis and the boundary of the park. We placed masses in a staggered manner starting from the sharpest corner, because we wanted to create vault-like interstitial spaces between masses which add depths to the narrow site and create opportunities for passersby to face the retail shops. The shops are not visible from the road and the visitors are naturally drawn into the arcade and the shops in between. The project aims at creating slow circulation flow within the site to improve and lengthen the visitors’ experience as circulations on both sides permeate the shops.
Round Roofs
The design focuses on revealing its existence through distortion of familiar forms rather than strong and unfamiliar forms. Round roofs seem to have special energy and vibe that might inspire people and provide coziness to residents while looking at the round sky. While homogeneous spaces work as well, round roofs from inside and outside of the building can provide different experiences. Vertical walls and roof lines seamlessly connect and simple lines are repeated to make the cross-sections of the house its façade. Barrel vault system is an archaic stone masonry structure with a series of arches now being replaced by concrete or steel.
Recently, engineered wood structures incorporate the system. In order to realize such a structure with a thin section, we came up with a combination of 2x8s, 2x10s and OSB boards. Sitting on the rough concrete podium of the ground floor, the smooth arches create roofs and walls at the same time and the recessed windows accentuate the arched roof lines. Semi-circular windows facing the sky link the residents to the environment. Building can be read as one entity, but once one comes inside, each room feels like a long tunnel and exist as individual entities within the space. We hope these unusual spaces to provide exceptional experiences and the project to play a role as a catalyst to revitalize the area.
