NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WORLD WRITING

Location: Incheon, South Korea
Project Size: 200,000 SF
Status: Unbuilt

“Scribus ergo sumus” = We write, therefore we are.

Communication is the common thread that stitches centuries of humanity together, linking generations and inspiring future ones, defining civilizations, and celebrating the unique voices of cultures around the globe. Writing is the foundation for communication, providing a means for indelibly inscribing thoughts and intentions, emotions and desires, facts and figures.  The National Museum of World Writing is an opportunity to showcase communication as the common thread of humanity, to elevate and make permanent—to inscribe—the significance of writing as a marker for where cultures originated and where they might head in the future.

INSCRIBE derives its formative language from the processes, purposes, and evolution of writing, thereby insuring the museum’s intentions are made manifest in the edifice itself. It unapologetically avoids the neutral; it is more than just subject or verb. Like a William Faulkner story, it is not always linear, suggesting that the museum is like a body of text in which the readers are in fact encouraged to develop their own sequence and reaction. Movement thus becomes the plot for the museum, a vehicle to foster interactions between researchers and visitors, scholars and schoolchildren.

Just as humanity began etching pictographs several thousands of years ago, visitors begin their journey by descending on an inviting path carved into the earth. The cuneiform-type court collects visitors and allows them to remove themselves from their immediate surroundings to more fully focus on the museum’s offerings. Once inside, visitors read and digest the museum’s abundant offerings at their own pace: they are free to allow their experience to unfold in front of them as they progress through the museum’s plot. INSCRIBE then emerges from the earth, highlighting the historical evolution of writing from permanent carves to ethereal typing and writing’s ability to move readers from darkness to light through gained knowledge. In doing so, the museum folds back on itself to foster visual connections between visitors and their surroundings: the museum, Songdo Central Park, and the surrounding city. Rich exhibition spaces and spectacular views, including axial views toward the Incheon Art Center, offer visitors that ascend to the museum’s highest level a fitting climax.

In creating a repository for the history of writing, the museum must acknowledge that—like the sun—writing possesses dueling positive and negative powers. As such, it is a story of light and dark, open and closed, hard and soft. Large planes of glass serve as truth-telling words to the museum’s internal courtyard, promoting transparency and light (enlightenment) while alluding to the digital age of writing. Engraved concrete obscures, shelters, and supports, all while recalling inscription’s historical origins.

This duality is taken a step further in the way the museum deftly handles its position as an intermediary between Sondgo City and the park’s more natural, organic environment. To preserve as much park space as possible and acknowledge Songdo City’s own manufactured genesis, INSCRIBE’s roof becomes an accessible landscape that allows the museum to gently blend into the park along the river’s edge.