Tradition in Modern Architecture
Kim Swoo Geun and Criticism of Buyeo National Museum
After 9 years of training in Japan, Kim Swoo Geun returned to his homeland in 1960. As a 29 years old architect without a built project to his name, he won the state competition for the design of the new National Assembly Hall a year prior. However, he found Korea in the midst of political and societal turmoil. After the end of Japanese colonialism in 1945, Korea was promptly divided along the 38th parallel by the United States and the Soviet Union with the promise that Korea would be a unified country soon.[1] Unfortunately, a permanent division between the North and the South in the Korean peninsula became an inescapable reality among people in the late 1950s after the Korean War (1950–1953). Though a democratic government sponsored by the United States was established in 1948 in the South, the first president Syngman Rhee ruled the country autocratically and the economic prospects looked dismal.[2] After years of discontent among South Korean citizens, military general Park Chung Hee staged a coup on May 16, 1961 and established a military government in place of the democratic government.
The new military government pursued a long quest to legitimize their claim to rule over the other (North) by espousing anti-communist propaganda and focusing on capitalistic economic developments. Anti-Japanese sentiment also remained strong among Korean citizens. The Japanese brutally oppressed and ruled the Korean peninsula and its people for 35 years in the first half of the 20th century, and that memory was not forgotten. When the Park Chung Hee government normalized relations with Japan in 1960, the South Korean citizens responded with violent protests.
In cultural policy, the government’s slogan was “creating new national arts based on traditional culture.” The debates over what could be considered traditionally Korean were inevitably linked to the ideology of the military regime. To achieve this goal, restoration of historic works was carried out and systematic studies of traditional architecture were conducted. Furthermore, modern South Korean architects designing new public facilities were required to borrow motifs from traditional architecture rather than draw on contemporary modernist theories.[3] At the forefront of this discussion were Kim Swoo Geun, the star debutant architect who received Japanese education and prominently won the National Assembly competition in 1959, and Kim Chung Up, who trained under Le Corbusier from 1952 to 1955 and then returned to Korea to establish himself quickly as the leading Korean architect and most influential voice in the profession.
Though Kim Swoo Geun’s winning competition entry for the National Assembly did not materialize due to political instability, the National Assembly competition and project led him to wrap up his education in Japan and establish his own practice in Korea. Kim Swoo Geun quickly became a household name winning important public commissions through politicians he befriended during the competition. However, in his fourth built project — the Buyeo National Museum (initial design process started in 1965, design completed and project published in 1967, construction completed in 1968) — Kim Swoo Geun faced widespread public criticism that ultimately caused his career to come to a halt. Though the criticism itself had bad consequences in the short term, the design process and the lessons he learned from the Buyeo National Museum controversy were crucial to the formation of his career.
The Buyeo National Museum project was built to house and display artefacts from the Baekje civilization, an ancient kingdom in southwestern Korea. The National Museum of Korea commissioned Kim Swoo Geun to design and build the The Buyeo Museum on a hillside in the small town of Buyeo, the ancient capital of the Baekje civilization. As a relatively young architect in his 30s, Kim Swoo Geun utilized multiple references to design the Buyeo Museum. As shown in the plan of the site, the museum complex occupies a small isolated area in the city and the building itself is detached from the street. The site is not organized in a linear axis and is separated into three sections corresponding to changes in elevation level in consideration of the hilly site. Hence, a visitor must wander through the gardens and walk up the steps in order to access the main museum building.
The steep roof, echoing the slope of the hill, dominates the view of the main building. The roof consists of three parts: tiles, a circular chimney-like white structure, and the highly exaggerated concrete beams creating multiple bays in the façade. The exaggerated concreate beams may be the result emulating certain features of traditional architecture with rough modern materials, similar to Le Corbusier and Tange Kenzo’s methods in the 1950s. The circular chimney-like tubes from the outside are shafts that bring in ample sunlight to the interior. One large rectangular exhibition room flooded with skylight comprises the museum’s interior.
The main entrance of the museum complex consists of a staircase and a grand entrance pavilion. Two vertical columns and a slightly cantilevered horizontal beam comprise the form of the entrance pavilion. The roof of the pavilion gently points upwards on both sides, similar to the form of a torii, a classic entry gate at of Japanese Shinto shrines. The form of the entrance pavilion and the main building received severe criticism from other practicing architects, most notably Kim Chung Up, and the general public, especially from the popular daily newspaper Donga Ilbo.
The two architects Kim Swoo Geun and Kim Chung Up seemed to have agreed on a number of issues in the beginning. In 1966, a design competition for the National Museum of Korea (currently National Folk Museum) recommended referencing traditional motifs in its guidelines, igniting a passionate debate within the Korean architecture community. However, when the winner was announced, both Kim Swoo Geun and Kim Chung Up opposed the design. They both pointed out that the winning entry by Kang Bong Jin was a mere copy of Bulguksa Temple’s stylobate and Beopjusa Temple’s pagoda without any spark of creativity by the architect.[4] Instead of treating tradition as a source of inspiration, the two Kims agreed that Kang Bong Jin simply copied Korean tradition.[5] From the National Museum competition, issues of imitation and creation became the center of the debate utilizing tradition in modern architecture.
Yet ironically, when Kim Chung Up designed the Samilro Building in 1969, which directly referenced Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram building, the critiques of imitation remained silent. Instead, the Samilro Building was hailed as a symbol of economic growth and advanced technology.[6] This contrast indicates that a double standard was prevalent in South Korean architectural discourse in the 1960s: while stringent criteria prohibiting imitation of regional traditional architecture was in place, imitation of international modern architecture was apparently sanctioned.
The criticism of Kim Swoo Geun’s Buyeo Museum went further than simply imitating tradition. What outraged many Korean architects and intellectuals was the origin of the architect’s inspiration. On August 19, 1967, the Donga Ilbo compared the form of the entrance of the Buyeo Museum to the Japanese torii, an entrance to a Shinto shrine. Interestingly, the paper also quoted Kim Swoo Geun saying that “the Baekje civilization laid the groundwork and influenced Japanese traditional culture,” hence the comparison between his museum celebrating Baekje culture and the Japanese torii was not problematic. However, the Donga Ilbo discredited his claim and published a series of articles by historians refuting the connection of Baekje and Japanese culture.
The main building of the museum was also criticized. The editorial posed questions about what traditional features he was exaggerating in the façade. The steepness of the roof, exaggerated expression of structure, and the strong triangular shape in section suggest similarities to Japanese Shinto shrines rather than local Korean Buddhist temples. Since anti-Japanese sentiment remained strong, the Donga Ilbo argued for the complete demolition of the museum.[7]
Kim Swoo Geun received the most criticism from a fellow architect Kim Chung Up. Kim Chung Up wrote of the style of Kim Swoo Geun’s Buyeo Museum Japanese: “Even the layman can feel it. The architect modeled the main gate after the torii of a Japanese shrine and then deformed the main building along the lines of the shrine itself.”[8] Kim Chung Up went further to criticize not just the design but also the practicality of the building plan as a museum. Kim Chung Up felt that the bright interior with direct sunlight is not a desirable circumstance for a museum. Other architects echoed similar sentiments as Kim Chung Up. Architect Kim Jong Soo summarized the controversy surrounding the Buyeo Museum stating “this building is just an imitation of Tange Kenzo’s modern version of a Japanese shrine.”[9]
Surfacing in this debate over Kim Swoo Geun’s Buyeo Museum was an important rule of exclusion in the discourse in the post-liberation period: Korean architects, although acclaimed when using Western architecture as direct precedents for their work, were forbidden to imitate Japanese architecture. Even though practical and theoretical influences from Japan ran deep in Korean architecture, any attempt to hint at a Japanese source was strictly prohibited.
Kim Swoo Geun, in defense against the criticism he received, published an article on September 5, 1967 in the Donga Ilbo. First, he distanced himself from his previous article on August 19 in the newspaper that reported his claim on the connection between Baekje and Japanese culture by saying, “those are the words of the journalist who interviewed me and altered my statements for editing purposes.” Instead, he argued that the design of the Buyeo Museum is not Japanese nor Baekje: “the language of the design is inherently mine.” In response to Kim Chung Up, who called his design a grotesque and deformed from Japanese Shinto shrines, Kim Swoo Geun responded that his design did not show characteristics of Japanese Shinto shrines nor of a Buddhist temple during the Baekje era. The design of the Buyeo Museum came from himself trained as a modern architect and so the Buyeo Museum should be called “Kim Swoo Geun style.”[10]
Kim Chung Up discredited Kim Swoo Geun’s defense and wrote another article to the Donga Ilbo on September 12. Kim Chung Up stated that Kim Swoo Geun was not mature enough to balance and reinterpret traditional and modern design, and that Kim Swoo Geun had not yet acquired his own architectural language. The Buyeo Museum is not a result of a substantial creative process but a result of repeated training. A creative process requires the architect to design based on his philosophy and sensibility. However, the details of the intersection of the planes to beams suggest similarities between the Buyeo Museum and Japanese tradition, not Korean tradition.[11]
Kim Swoo Geun and Kim Chung Up clearly disagreed on the validity of the Buyeo Museum. This debate surfaced similarities and differences between the two on how to best represent tradition in modern architecture. First, both share similar approaches in terms of what modern architecture should do. They both agreed that modern architecture should go beyond the aesthetics of tradition and try to aspire for something new for the future. This shows that they were both influenced by Tange Kenzo’s regionalism. Tange asserted that architects should infuse tradition with a new vitality. How an architect interpreted precedents should not lead to stagnation but to the creation of new forms and a living lineage. For Tange, as Jonathan Reynolds has argued, “creativity was a dialectical process; he needed to wrestle with tradition in order to produce something new.”[12]
However, though they shared similar goals on the role tradition should play in the modern era, the two reinterpreted tradition in a remarkably different way. In the 1960s, as Jung Inha argues, Kim Swoo Geun advocated for an analogical approach between tradition and the modern, whereas Kim Chung Up advocated for a deformative approach to identify certain architectural aspects of traditional buildings and reinterpret them with modern construction materials.[13]
Kim Swoo Geun’s analogical approach used tradition as a metaphor to search for a new monumental form through exaggerated structures of exposed concrete. Kim Swoo Geun reminisced to his friend about his design philosophy in the 1960s saying that he was interested in using simple references and create monumental structures. He referenced a traditional purse to sketch the initial design of unbuilt the Seoul Music Hall in 1962, a traditional kite for the Tower Hotel project in 1963, and from the curvature of the legs of a traditional Korean table for the Freedom Center project in 1963. Though he denied this at first, he later admitted that he referenced the texture patterns of Baekje’s pottery to come up with his design for the Buyeo Museum as well. Architectural historian Jung Inha theorizes Kim Swoo Geun resorted to analogies in his early design to convince non-architect clients easily with clear references instead of trying to explain complex modernist theories. Also, Jung Inha suggests that Kim Swoo Geun had not fully found his method to reinterpret tradition and so utilized easy metaphors to think about and dictate the design process.[14]
Kim Chung Up, on the other hand, approached traditional architecture as the basis of iterative processes that would ultimately deform the formal characteristics of traditional architecture to create a new modernist design. Throughout his career, Kim Chung Up was interested in identifying something invariable and timeless amid the variant forms of traditional architecture. Defining and deforming those elements became his design process. In the entrance for the U.N. memorial, Kim Chung Up distorted the columns and underroof joints of the kiwa, a common Korean tiled roof, and in the French Embassy of Korea, he transformed the curvature of a traditional roof.[15]
Hence, Kim Swoo Geun and Kim Chung Up differed in opinion about the treatment of tradition in the design of the Buyeo Museum. Kim Chung Up would identify certain architectural elements and details and draw comparisons to a Japanese Shinto shrine, making literal comparisons, whereas Kim Swoo Geun would focus on the larger meaning of the structure and make abstract comparisons. Kim Swoo Geun wanted to showcase the greatness of Baekje culture through a monumental inspiring design.
Whether Kim Swoo Geun referenced Japanese Shinto shrines during his design process remains a question. However, it is plausible that he would have considered the hilly site of the museum complex and drawn sketches as if the museum was a continuation of the hill. A relationship to nature is an important aspect in any vernacular architecture. And since the museum requires a large singular space, Kim Swoo Geun might have thought to place the supporting columns along the edge of the museum so that the structure itself was suspended from these slanted concrete supporting beams, freeing up the space in the middle. In order to emphasize monumentality, Kim Swoo Geun might have exaggerated this concrete beams to the side and upwards near the roof. This form, seen from the side, creates a triangular shape with a series of visible joints between the plane and the beam typical of Japanese wood construction. Whether Kim Swoo Geun consciously referenced such Shinto designs or Tange Kenzo’s modern reinterpretation of Japanese tradition remains a mystery. However, considering that Kim Swoo Geun had spent nine years training as an architect in Tokyo and was largely influenced by the theories of Tange Kenzo and Kiyonori Kikutake, Kim Swoo Geun might not have intended his Buyeo Museum to reference Japanese origins, but his lessons from and interest in Japan might have unconsciously permeated his design process.
The debate on tradition in modern architecture, implemented by the South Korean military government, caused great discussion in the South Korean architectural profession during the 1960s. The controversy surrounding Kim Swoo Geun’s Buyeo Museum stimulated national interest in the architectural profession since daily newspapers, especially Donga Ilbo, reported extensively on this issue. For Kim Swoo Geun, the controversy ultimately caused him to rethink his approach to design. Once a star debutant in the field by virtue of winning the National Assembly competition, Kim Swoo Geun faced broad public criticism which hindered his reputation. His career came to a brief halt, when he did not receive any commissions from 1969 to 1972. This period made it possible for him to rethink his approach and to cultivate a new design philosophy utilizing tradition in a truly unique way from other contemporaries that rebounded his career from the hiatus. Without the Buyeo Museum controversy, Kim Swoo Geun would have never been the same designer that we know today.
[1] Carter J Eckert, et al. Korea Old and New A History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 350.
[2] Charles Armstrong, The Koreas (New York: Routledge, 2014), 22.
[3] Jung Inha, Architecture and Urbanism in Modern Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013), 83.
[4] A stylobate is the stepped platform upon which colonnades of temple columns are placed. The base of the temple.
[5] Kim Swoo Geun et al., “Symposium: How to Inherit Our Tradition in Architecture,” Gonggan (Space Magazine) 3 (1967), 6–17.
[6] Jung Inha, 김중업 건축론 (title trans. 金重業 建築論 or Theory of Kim Chung Up Architecture) (Seoul: Sanoptoso, 2000), 246.
[7] Donga Ilbo Editorial, “On the Design of the Buyeo National Museum,” Donga Ilbo, August 19, 1967.
[8] Kim Chung Up, “Japanese aesthetic in the Buyeo Museum,” Donga Ilbo, September 2, 1967.
[9] Kim Jong Soo, “On the Bueyo Museum,” Korean Architects 2 (1967), 4–27.
[10] Kim Swoo Geun, “Controversy Surrounding the Buyeo Museum,” Donga Ilbo, September 5, 1967.
[11] Kim Chung Up, “In response to Kim Swoo Geun,” Donga Ilbo, September 12, 1967.
[12] Jonathan Reynolds, Allegories of Time and Space (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2016), 103.
[13] Jung Inha, 김수근 건축론 (title trans. 金壽根 建築論or Architect Kim Swoo Geun) (Seoul: Spacetime, 2000), 76
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid., 77.
