Nam June Paik Art Center, Suwon - Korea
[International Competition 2003, 1st Price. Completion 2008]

The design of the NJP Art Center aims to be an homage to the oeuvre of the artist.The work of Paik addresses the ongoing evolution and perception of our world in a playful manner, necessitating a flexible museum exhibition space that allows for experimentation. The NJP Art Center fills in the existing valleys of the museum’s park by spanning a grid roof structure over them. The appropriated space below the roof - the "petrified topography" - becomes part of the exhibition space of the museum. The tension between the Cartesian structure and the amorphous topography contributes to the identity of the museum.
The ideal of the "matrix" regulates the various aspects of the museum such as the museum space, the roof structure and the undulating floor, allowing for the necessary functions and flexibility, always relating to each other and creating not an object building but a rather perfect instrument for exhibiting. Cut-outs in the roof create a relationship to the landscape and manifest the continuity of the topography from the inside to the outside and vice versa.
Light, or its careful manipulation, plays a very important role in articulating the space within the main museum hall: Indirect and reflected light not only organises the space but also directs the visitors through it. A characteristic of the museum is its screen facade consisting of several layers of partly printed glass with different degrees of reflection. The façade becomes an instrument for controlling the volume and quality of permeating light, in this particular museum that exhibits luminous objects of art.
The NJP museum’s idea is born from the site and rooted in the particular park landscape of Suwon.
The design of the NJP museum applies the same methodology of approach as did Nam June Paik in his work and aims to be an homage to the artist.

Architect: M. Stankovic + T. Jortzick
[KSMS Schemel Stankovic, Ges. v. Architekten mbH]