Designed for Daeyang Shipping Co. Ltd, Daeyang Gallery and House is a residential and art gallery project located in Seoul. Completed in 2012 by Steven Holl Architects, this private gallery and house sits in the hills of the Gangbuk section and consists of three pavilions. The red and charcoal stained wood interiors of these pavilions are the main highlights of the project.
Pavilions
The building has a basic geometry that inspired by a 1967 sketch for a music score. This music score is made by the composer Istvan Anhalt, “Symphony of Modules,” and discovered in a book by John Cage titled “Notations.” This building also consists of three pavilions: one of them for entry, another one for a residence, and the last one for an event space. There is also a sheet of water that establishes the reference plan from below and above.
Design
The ascending steps into the entry pavilion of the building bring the viewer at elbow height with the unifying sheet of water after they pass through a bamboo formed garden wall at the entry court. An inner and awesome feeling of vegetation, water, sky, and the reddened patina of the copper walls are reflected in different ways at the center area of this building.
Interiors
The pavilions offer red and charcoal stained wood interiors that activated by skylight strips of clear glass. These strips are cut into the roof of the building. Warm sunlight bends and turns around the building’s inner spaces, animating them with each season’s changing light every day. The strips of glass lenses in the base of the pool break through the surface just like a cesura in music, bringing dappled light to the white granite floor and white plaster walls.
Details
The building exteriors in this project are a rain screen of custom patinated copper. It ages within the landscape naturally and beautifully. This gallery and house building is cooled and also heated with geothermal wells to create a comfortable atmosphere throughout the spaces of the gallery and house.
Daeyang Gallery and House Gallery
Photography: Steven Holl Architects