Nam June Paik Museum 

Project Team:  Eight Inc
Tim Kober - Principal 
BJ Siegel - Studio Director
Mark Little - Senior Designer
Doo Ho Lee - Senior Designer
Fred Holt - Senior Designer





 

We were a finalist among 439 submissions for the competition to design the museum to honor the artist Nam June Paik. The building is to serve as a repository for the artist's creative oeuvre and a home for his future artistic activities. The building bridges two hills near the entrance to the park and makes no attempt to camouflage itself against the natural background. The museum is designed as a vessel or armature into which modular rooms can be inserted, each housing a specific art installation.  The exterior shell is a series of structural ribs that also contain building services. Rooms can be added or removed or reconfigured in multiple ways, reflecting the nature of Paik’s work. The interior becomes a collection of vignettes to be explored. The complexity of the interior will increase with the requirements of the program and as new works are added. This complexity is the result of a highly evolved spatial organization, achieved with a relatively restricted palette of components rather than a random outcome, with an organic kind of growth.