In the swift passage through modernity the relationship with historical continuity has often been lost. 

Thus, the complexity of formal and spatial schemas, in character with traditional architecture and the corresponding urban design, gives way to simplification which is void of memory. 

The layers that made up and broke down the architectural space of traditional Korean architecture become huge blind and dumb surfaces in the anonymous residential buildings of the new city. 

The same layers in the site cut through the volumetric masses of the incinerator and set the scene for the transformation that follows. 

In this evolutionary process/project which evolves into a cultural center, the aim is to restore the relationship with memory in a process of anamnesis that combines the simplification of the layers with the complexity of their origin. 

As if taken from an old postcard featuring the roofs of Gwangju, these translucent pages reveal the simplicity of the spaces they contain and the complexity of the relationships between the several and diverse functions that animate the library. 

Combining complexity and semplicity

1

Suggestions

“La nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir des confuses paroles
L’homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l’observent avec des regards familiers. 

Comme des longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent…”

“Nature is a temple in which living pillars 
Sometimes give voice to confused words; 
Man passes there through forests of symbols 
Which look at him with understanding eyes.

Like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance 
In a deep and tenebrous unity, 
Vast as the dark of night and as the light of day, 
Perfumes, sounds, and colors correspond …”

(Charles Baudelaire, “Correspondences”, from “The Flowers of Evil”, 1861)

2

The concept

A vibration that produces the sound. MOVEMENT.

A compositional grid, RHYTHM, that restrains the continuous change of the space shape made by the vibration of the bodies close to each other’s.

MUSIC

Sounds and silences, ordered according a precise rule.

The National Concert Hall “Tautos Namai”

Full and empty composed in the rhythm grid

3

The Site TAURAS HILL

“La nature est un temple où … The Rhythm Grid … de vivants pilier
Laissent parfois sortir des confuses paroles”
…
Sometimes gives voice to confused words  …“SOUNDS”

Tautos Namai is part of the nature, it can be crossed by passing through the gaps, like in the forest, giving continuity to the park.

Through the rhythm, the sounds = Transparency, Continuity

TAUTOS NAMAI, the National Concert Hall on the top of Tauras Hill,
in the park between the trees 

• A park on the front
• A park on the back
• The city at the foot of the hill

4

The Building

The RHYTHM Grid

It composes and it keeps together  the Voids – Transparent spaces and the Solids – Closed spaces

The Voids – Transparent spaces give continuity to the park that ascends Taura Hill

The MOVEMENT that generates the sound deforms the space, that is the RHYTHM