2006 – Prehistory Museum _ Jeongok Korea

 

 
Program Prehistory museum on a prehistoric site
Floor area 5000 m2
Place Jeongok, South Korea
OwnerGyeonggi Provincial Museum

General Principles The museum, building of our time should prepare the entrance to another period.
To consider the prehistoric time scale. To respect and to use the potential of the site (buried basalt precipice). To give hindsight to the spectator, to surprise and question him. To suggest the memory of the presented objects.

 

We think that the large natural environment is one key to connect with the prehistoric period. We want to offer a view on large landscape. The objective is to create a dialog with the natural site (geology, morphology) and the natural environment (vegetation). There were no constructions in the Palaeolithic’s period, that’s why we do not want to build a museum that could remind or represent a neo prehistory. We want the museum to assume being an entrance to discover a world, a discreet intrusive of our world. The nature should then appropriate elements of the building (the grid…) in order to seem like a new relic of the future.

The museum transport the spectator to another time:

1- Arrival by car or bus: Our time is reflecting through a big mirror.
2- A glass elevator extracts us from this reality (period). Going throw the mirror. Arrival on a huge platform (20m higher). Connexion with the sky and the landscape (hindsight). Median state.
3- Beginning of the connexion with the prehistorically site trough a screen which relay images of the excavations sites (mixed times).
4- Going down to the exhibition by a spiral ramp around a deep precipice (existing basalt precipice), element of the Palaeolithic period. The visitor goes down to the ground following the displayed object in the rough rock. They are exhibited sometimes by the ramp sometimes in caves.
5- Walking through light, vision of the atrium from downstairs, entrance in a big cave, last exhibition room.
6- Going to the exit (elevator and corridor) to continue the outside exhibition trough a plain.
7- Outdoor exhibition
8- Coming back to the platform with an escalator.