Museums
Purpose
The Bontae Museum, whose name means "本態, the original state," was founded in 2012 on the UNESCO World Heritage-listed and globally beloved Jeju Island with the goal of becoming a beautiful cultural space that explores the original state of culture that has been hidden by the vestiges of time. The museum was born out of the love and sincerity of its founder, who has been a lover of traditional Korean handicrafts for more than 40 years, and wanted to share the beauty of Korean traditional handicrafts with a wider audience. Designed by world-renowned architect Tadao Ando, the Bontae Museum aims to be an open space where anyone can easily access and enjoy culture through a variety of exhibitions, cultural forums, and academies, in keeping with its mission of exploring the beauty of nature.
Vision
The Bontae Museum will explore new future values of traditional Korean handicrafts to communicate with the modern world and become a space where various art museum cultures from around the world come together with Korean culture. We hope to establish the identity of Korean culture through beauty, moving the emotions of people around the world by bringing together people and people, nature and architecture, tradition and modernity, and the world and Korea. We look forward to your continued love and interest in Bontae Museum, which explores the beauty of our nature.
Tadao Ando
Tadao Ando is a world-renowned architect who won the 1987 Mainichi Prize for the Arts, the 1992 Carlsberg Prize for Architecture, and the 1995 Pritzker Prize, architecture's Nobel Prize. He began designing the Bontae Museum in 2009 and completed it in 2012. The Bontae Museum embodies Tadao Ando's architectural philosophy, which considers the harmony between architecture and its surroundings by incorporating light and water as architectural elements in his trademark exposed concrete.
The museum was designed with the concept of "tradition and modernity in harmony with the land of Jeju Island," and is divided into two spaces, one for traditional crafts and the other for contemporary art.
Tadao Ando
'Interview with Bontae Museum'
The founder said that he wanted to create a museum that could contain contemporary art and Korean traditions at the same time, and it's quite a challenge to harmonize contemporary art with traditional things. There's a pond and the grounds are large, so you have to look at the outside as a space as well.
First, there's a section that shows the space of traditional elements in three dimensions. If you go a little bit further from there, you have contemporary art, and if you go further from contemporary art, you have contemporary art again outside. The important thing is that even if you look at contemporary art and you don't know what you're looking at, you still have that idea in your mind that you don't know what you're looking at. If it's a house, a residential space needs what the person who lives there is thinking about. And a museum needs art. It needs art.
Because the Bontae Museum is an effort to answer the founder's question, "What should be passed on to the next generation," I hope that the Bontae Museum will remain a property of the Korean mind, not limited to Jeju Island.
Architectural elements
Water
The movement of the wind through the passageways on either side creates movement, while at other times it presents a stable and serene landscape. The shallow structure allows for quietly flowing water, which architecturally serves to separate the building from its surroundings before the visitor reaches the space.
Waterfall
The movement of the wind through the passageways on either side creates movement, while at other times it presents a stable and serene landscape. The shallow structure allows for quietly flowing water, which architecturally serves to separate the building from its surroundings before the visitor reaches the space.
External elements
Geometry
Tadao Ando's architecture is characterized by its geometric structure. It refers to the juxtaposition, combination, division, and addition of simple and rigid geometric elements, such as squares and rectangles, to give a sense of rhythm to the space, and the individual spaces created by these elements combine with each other to create a diverse and complex whole.
In addition, throughout the museum, he deliberately obscures the scene that is about to unfold, sparking the imagination and curiosity of visitors about what is to come.
Maze-like pathways
In designing the museum, the architect focused on the visual experience of moving along a given path. For Tadao Ando, "spatiality" is not the result of looking from one absolute direction, but rather the result of multiple viewpoints created by the body's movement. To this end, he creates deliberate sequences in his architecture by artificially manipulating or lengthening pathways. He has also talked about how the idea of a detouring approach was imprinted in his subconscious through his experience of traditional Japanese temples.
Traditional Korean fence
Tadao Ando focused on creating a museum where the architectural elements could be seen as both traditional and modern, in line with the exhibition content. After several site visits and consultations with the owner, we decided to finish the building and the wall that runs between the buildings in the form of a traditional Korean fence rather than exposed concrete. The resulting traditional fence path allows visitors to experience contemplation with the fence on the left and the water flowing in the wind on the right, allowing them to feel the beauty of Ando's architectural features, nature, and Korean tradition all in one place.
Light
The movement of the wind through the passageways on either side creates movement, while at other times it presents a stable and serene landscape. The shallow structure allows for quietly flowing water, which architecturally serves to separate the building from its surroundings before the visitor reaches the space.
Internal elements
본태박물관은 효율적인 동선이기보다는 미로와 같이 복잡하고 구불구불한 동선입니다. ‘생각할 수 있는 공간’을 강조하는 안도 다다오의 건축 철학이 담겨 있습니다. 먼 길을 돌아가기도, 왔던 길을 되돌아가기도 하는 동선은 일반적인 시선에서는 다소 비효율적인 동선이지만 안도 다다오는 이 동선 속에서 박물관의 곳곳을 거닐고 느끼며, 자신만의 시간을 가질 수 있는 경험을 할 수 있게 합니다. 다음 장면을 예측할 수 없는 미로와 같은 길을 따라가면 안도 다다오의 건축 시그니처인 ‘중정’을 만나 볼 수 있습니다. 안도 다다오는 ‘갇혀 있는 공간에 중정을 만듦으로써 소우주를 끌어다 놓은 것 같다’고 이야기한 것처럼 중정을 통한 자연, 빛을 건축 내부로 끌어들이는 것을 중요하게 생각하며, 중정을 통한 공간의 무한한 확장성을 선보입니다. 그 끝에 명상의 방을 만나게 됩니다. 전시를 관람하는 동선도 이곳까지 찾아 들어오는 길도 모두 미로처럼 복잡하지만, 박물관의 미로들을 통해 다다른 <명상의 방> 속에서 자신이 느낀 것과 생각한 것들을 모두 정리하고 나갈 수 있길 바라는 건축가의 의도가 담겨 있습니다.
Nature
Tadao Ando talks about Jeju's natural environment "Jeju Island is a place where the forces of nature are never easy. It's a volcanic island with Hallasan, the highest peak in southern Korea, in the center, and exposed lava flows everywhere, and the winds are so strong that trees don't grow well. In designing the museum's architecture, we had to constantly research the site and consider the efficient layout and circulation of the building in order to harmonize the building with the lush and green surroundings."
He says that while the composition or aesthetics of the architectural space itself is important, obsessing over that fact leads to a dogmatism that forgets "where the building is." In addition to the simple raison d'être of a building as a "cool building or landmark," he also thinks deeply about the environment around the building to incorporate features of the place, such as natural and cultural characteristics, into the design so that it can be called the built environment.
"We hope to change the meaning of nature through architecture, rather than become intimate with nature itself - it's architecture abstracting nature."
