SPACE September 2026 (No. 706)
Architecture Responding to Two Different Frontages
The Seoul National University Medical Library adjoins a landscaped area with a narrow sidewalk to the south and faces a broad open space – the Gyeongmogung Shrine Site – to the west. This dual condition explains why the library, while conceived as a single building, takes on two distinct faces in response to nature and history. Along the wooded side, the existing trees were preserved, while the library was set back as far as possible to widen the sidewalk and landscaped area for visitors approaching the hospital. Here, a glass volume and a brick volume have been positioned alongside the greenery. The column-free, transparent grand reading room opens to the woods in the south, signaling to pedestrians passing by at dawn and in the evening that medical research continues unabated. Facing the Gyeongmogung Shrine Site, a designated cultural heritage site, the space is kept broadly open, while achromatic granite and louvers are used on the façade so that the building serves as a restrained backdrop to its historic setting.
