Output details

YoulHwaDang Book Hall, Paju Book City, South Korea

ARU designed three adjacent buildings that make a 'cultural cluster' at Paju Book City. These buildings demonstrate and extend the Paju Urban Design Guidelines made by ARU in the late 1990’s. Florian Beigel and Philip Christou, (ARU), collaborated with executive architect Choi JongHoon (NiA), Seoul.

This building project is a further development of ARU’s design research to find a more figurative architecture of civility and decorum. Precise scale model studies, design sketches, and constructive dialogue with the client and building team are central to this design research. A good working relationship with NiA was very important.

The Book Hall building makes a number of specific offerings to the city. The Art Yard is a little public square with a small portico building that stands over the main entrance. The front façade facing the Art Yard speaks a friendly classical language of vertical differentiation, composed of several building elements like a group of characters or building figures. It reveals the essential spatial differentiation inside the building: book hall, reading room, book café, mezzanine lounge and double storey apartments above. This is a development of the language of the two neighbouring buildings designed by ARU.

In the UK was featured in Building Design and the FT, appeared in Brit Insurance Designs of the Year, exhibition and catalogue, Design Museum, London 17 Feb-31 Oct, 2010. In Korea featured in the Chosun Daily News, as a chapter in

Paju Bookcity Culturescape, edited by Seung H-sang, and appeared in

'City Scales' exhibition, Gallery Lonchel, Seoul, 20 Aug -19 Sept 2009.

In Denmark featured in Arkitekten. In Switzerland appeared in 'Translations' exhibition, Swiss Architecture Museum, Basel, 4 May-26 May, 2013.