An introspective stage

Creative Music & Sound Center for the Youth

Location: Seoul, South Korea
Client: Seoul Metropolitan Government Office

Program: Youth Training Facility, area 1935,8m2, GFA 5647m2

The site is located within a noise buffer zone filtering all the major traffic noises on the west side highway and west industrial truck terminal.

Based on a careful site and context analysis, the site has a great potential considering all the K-12 schools, the large residential area including sinjeong-dong, mok-dong and nearby kyounggi province and public transportation accessibility. However, despite vicinity to all the schools, the site is lacking major public and green space for residents and students to enjoy. Providing students, visitors and professionals a public space as an interactive cultural stage is one key to the design.

By interweaving the five zones – support/management zone, community zone, performance zone, creative/practical training zone and education zone – with spaces to gather and interact, each of the spaces coherently start responding to performing activities rather than only being enclosed rooms. In order to bond the contrasting programs, communal programs are introduced.

The public-private value of each program determines the permeability and scale of the envelope. All four facades have different permeability based on the programs behind and control of natural sunlight. The north façade has the most group activity oriented programs and is therefore carefully laid behind.

In our point of view, instead of “learn to perform” and compete against others, the music education should be able to provide abundant opportunities to all our children to “perform to learn” : To learn about themselves, community, communication and acceptance. This gesture genuinely corresponds to the core idea of Obangsaek (오방색) that has been the essence of Korean arts and culture derived from nature for centuries.

Providing students, visitors and professionals a public space as an interactive cultural stage, the MLA+ ‘Introspective Stage’ design not only focuses on meeting the needs and wants of the youth but also makes a difference in resisting the current social norms of music education in South Korea.

Stages:
2018: architecture competition

Team:
MLA+: Olaf Gerson, Leonid Mikishev, Ally Unha Hyun, Reza Al-Kaabi, Mikhail Shvartsman, Anna Khodyreva