• Year: 2006

• Type: Architecture, Competition entry

• Location: Pyongyang, North Korea

The Ryugyung Hotel, for which the construction work was started to commemorate the occasion of the world youth games in 1987, still remains incomplete. It seems that the completion of this concrete pyramid of 330m is impossible due to a fatal flaw in terms of the  structure and the insufficient economic power of North Korea. Despite those failings it was made to advance the propaganda of the North Korean communist regime, and this monstrosity has become a clear example proving that their ideology has failed. If I forecast the future, I have many doubts on whether North Korea can maintain their regime. I have planned this project under the assumption that the North Korean government will collapse in a near future and a new democratic nation will be established (or unification with South Korea). The main concept in this project is to commemorate and remember people who sacrificed their lives for the democracy in both South and North Korea, with regard to the space for people which now symbolizes the dying ideology of the North and transforming

There are two things to solve for this project. They include the solution for a structural problem and the preservation of the original building and construction of the space for accommodating a new program. For the structure, a steel frame will reinforce from reinforced in the outer part. This frame rectifies the structural inadequacies and forms a vertical elevation. A new program is realized in this frame and this becomes a vertical street. To construct a vertical plane, not a horizontal one, I made a reference to the structure of a formicary. This structure consisting of descending shafts and horizontal chambers is a main design strategy in the project, i.e., connected morphology and genetics of form. In addition, the interaction of the line for structure and the one for program is another design strategy.