'Building of the Earth’; Fourth Prize in the internationalcompetition to design the Agricultural Research Institute + Museum of Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea.

 

 

“The Soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all.”

 

 

The Korean Institute of Architects organized an international open competition to design the Agricultural Research Institute + Museum of Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea, to be judged by an internationaldesign committee including Dean of SCI-Arc Hernan Diaz-Alonso. Taking third place (awarded Fourth Prize), was a collaboration between partners David Vardy (Distinguished Associate Professor and Director Wenzhou- Kean Design Lab/ WKDL) + Gu Zheng (Director Dedang Design Shanghai and studio teacher) + Shengze Chen (Director CATS Shanghai and studio teacher). Their project— ‘Building of the Earth’— addressed sustainability through a material-based approach, building fromrammed earth and from wood, as part of an architecture combining a stereotomy base with a high- tech wood and steel canopy system.

 

Inspired by Gyeongsangbuk-do’s gridded fields of rich red soils, the design employs a series of its own grids; zoning, environmental, and technical; and with the ground detailed as a continuity of ‘red’, continuous through hard and soft landscape, inside and out. Building from the soil was also meaningful in the context of an agricultural facility. There is a small museum, formed as a polycarbonate covered adaptive reuse of an existing storage building, and a new sawtooth canopy connects and shelters a series of office, housing, researchand storage spaces, organized within the aforementioned grids, andcovered by extrusions, inspired by surrounding agricultural tunnel and warehouse forms. “

 

There has been a recent revolution in the design and construction of wood structures. Wood is a natural and renewable material, and sequesters carbon, and when used in combination with steel, is the only sustainable material capable of large- span structures such as warehouses. Our project is part of a movement, re- introducing and innovating with wood, through combining contemporary design and modern methods of construction,” said David Vardy.

 

Shengze Chen added “our design is for a building ‘rooted’ in the earth, ‘grown’ from the earth, a ‘Building of the Earth’— made from these great walls of rich red rammed-earth, offering material beauty, economy and thermal mass”. For Gu Zheng, the project is “a landmark construction, and through the combination of soil and wood, articulates a refined system that would represents well the future- orientated Gyeongsangbuk-do Agricultural Resource Management Institute”.