Mimesis Museum

 

The Mimesis Museum, housing a book publisher’s private art collection, is located in Paju Book City, a new town 30 km from Seoul.

 

 

The flowing concrete form, that wraps around a central courtyard, was inspired by a sketch of a cat that Siza drew upon arriving at the site.

With that sketch, the idea for the building was there, drawn in one movement, one gesture

/Carlos Castanheira

 

 

 

The walls are almost windowless with most of the light coming through rafted ceilings, whose shapes form a counterpoint to the curved walls, with skylights spilling out from over their edges. The walls and ceilings are whitewashed, the floors marble and oak.

 

 

 

 

The three-story building has services in the basement,  temporary exhibition galleries and reception on the ground floor, overlooked by a mezzanine with a cafeteria and staff area, and the main exhibition spaces on the first floor.

Paju Book City was designed in 1999 by the Architecture Research Unit dedicated to the publishing industry.

I didn’t have as much context as I would like with which I could create a dialogue, I only had a site plan, so I had to concentrate on creating an atmosphere for the building.

/Álvaro Siza (Referring to the problem of building for a new town where your neighbors haven’t even been designed yet.)