Leeum is the Samsung Foundation's art museum in Hannam-dong, and its building alone justifies the visit: three separate structures by Mario Botta, Jean Nouvel, and Rem Koolhaas form the complex, each handling a different collection and each making a different architectural argument about what a museum building should do. The traditional Korean collection — celadon, white porcelain, Buddhist art — is housed in Botta's terracotta drum; the display methodology reserves single objects for individual rooms, lit from above through circular apertures, with the spatial silence that allows a single moon jar to be considered at the depth it requires. The contemporary collection occupies Koolhaas's structure. The transition between buildings is part of the experience — the three architects' very different assumptions about materiality and light becoming legible through direct comparison. The outdoor sculpture path connecting the buildings is correct in clear weather.
Hannam-dong, Seoul, South Korea