Detail of the project ed. 2020

SEOINN DESIGN – SAE­MOO­NAN CHURCH

Design­er	DongKyu Choi , Eun­seok Lee
Loca­tion	79, Sae­­mu­­nan-ro, Jong­no-gu, Seoul, Korea 03182
Design Team	Eun Seok Lee, Alex Yooche­ol Choi, Seungy­ong Jeong
Year	2019
Pho­to credits	© LIM JUNE YOUNG

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

Sae­moo­nan Church as a pub­lic place of Lov­ing Neighbors

Estab­lished as the first Kore­an protes­tant church, Sae­moo­nan Church con­struct­ed a new church on Sin­munno, Gwangh­wa­mun, cel­e­brat­ing its 132nd anniver­sary. The shape resem­bles a moth­er’s arms stretched out toward the sky. At the time of the design com­pe­ti­tion in 2010, the Kore­an Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty had put func­tion­al­ism as a top pri­or­i­ty strat­e­gy for church con­struc­tion, and many large church­es were show­ing off their exis­tence on a large scale. How­ev­er, Sae­moo­nan Church pro­posed four dis­tinct church con­struc­tion themes as basic guide­lines; ① the his­toric­i­ty as the moth­er church of Kore­an protes­tant church­es, ② the sym­bol­ism of doors open to heav­en ③ the spa­tial­i­ty of express­ing Christ as light, and ④ pre­sent­ing a water space as a mean­ing of bap­tism and har­mo­ny. Hence, we adapt­ed the themes with Lov­ing God and Lov­ing Neigh­bors and includ­ed them in the design. Lov­ing God was main­ly por­trayed through the use and sym­bol­ism of the space, and the aspects of Lov­ing Neigh­bors were expressed with the pub­lic­ness through the exter­nal appear­ance and lay­out effect of the build­ing that are revealed in the city center.
Shed­ding the dec­o­ra­tions of the spire and the goth­ic image, which have dom­i­nat­ed the arche­type of Chris­t­ian church con­struc­tion for two thou­sand years, seems to be the main val­ue con­tem­po­rary church con­struc­tion has faced. There­fore, in the con­struc­tion of Sae­moo­nan Church, the con­ven­tion­al spire was replaced by a soft curved effect that is open to the sky, and the exces­sive orna­ments were con­vert­ed into sim­ple and abstract expres­sions. In addi­tion, rather than focus­ing on show­ing the author­i­ty of the church, the love and mer­cy of God were metaphor­i­cal­ly expressed with the curve of the soft front. Fur­ther­more, instead of cre­at­ing a solemn spa­tial atmos­phere with the com­mon long cor­ri­dor form, a new peri­od­ic wor­ship space was pro­posed with a fan-shaped chapel plane that encour­ages the dynam­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion between believers.
The pub­lic con­struc­tion inten­tion of Lov­ing Neigh­bors is clear­ly vis­i­ble through­out the archi­tec­ture of Sae­moo­nan Church, and this seems to be an archi­tec­tur­al assign­ment that 21st cen­tu­ry church­es must deeply con­sid­er. In oth­er words, a pub­lic nature and a space man­age­ment pro­gram that sup­ports the dai­ly lives and com­fort of cit­i­zens must exist in the church, rather than mass pro­duc­ing church archi­tec­tures in a sym­bol­ic and rei­fied one-dimen­­sion­al form as a method of enlight­en­ment for mis­sion­ary work. The yard of Sae­­mu­­nan-ro cre­at­ed by the hol­low front and bent arch gate, which are church archi­tec­ture typolo­gies that can­not be found any­where else in the world, is intend­ed to become a prac­ti­cal rest­ing place of cit­i­zens by open­ing the church to neigh­bors rather than pur­su­ing a rev­er­ent wor­ship space with a closed nature like a monastery. The fact that a con­tin­u­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion was plot­ted through the lob­by towards the Sejong Cen­ter for the Per­form­ing Arts also illus­trates the open­ness of the church. Here, the small chapel as well, which will bring back the his­to­ry by down­scal­ing the exist­ing brick church, will be used as an active­ly open cul­tur­al space. In Seoul’s for­est of office build­ings, Sae­moo­nan Church pro­vides plen­ti­ful rest to the packed city cen­ter through its freely unfold­ing spa­tial works by open­ing and emp­ty­ing, rather than react­ing with a com­mer­cial phi­los­o­phy of scale like the build­ings of max­i­mum vol­ume in the sur­round­ing. This is how a con­tem­po­rary church express­es their love of neigh­bors to the city through publicness.
The trans­par­ent glass box, intend­ed to seem as if it was dis­ap­pear­ing into the sky beyond the curved wall, not only angles for a mor­pho­log­i­cal har­mo­ny that is in con­trast to the soft curved wall, but is also an archi­tec­tur­al strat­e­gy that aims for it to pro­tect the future gen­er­a­tions from the con­gest­ed streets and become a bright Edu­ca­tion Hall with a rooftop gar­den. Fur­ther­more, the top floor of the Edu­ca­tion Hall build­ing and the high alti­tude space of the Cross Tow­er can become a memo­r­i­al space open to every cit­i­zen, just as the many church­es of the world often open their top floor dome to their neigh­bors, since Seoul’s beau­ti­ful down­town panora­ma can be enjoyed to the utmost.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

BACK TO PROJECTS PAGE