Library Buildings around the World

and furniture, Loghabat, Paris: security and protection coordination, Jean-Paul Roux-Fouillet; bureau Van Dijk: multimedia and
computer technologies, building costs : 6 052 000 € bt value 2002
Bibliotheque nationale de France, Paris XIII – France 1989 - 1995
concours : août 1989, début des études : août 1989, début des travaux : mars 1992, date de livraison : avril 1995
surface du site : 65 300 m2, surface construite : 365 178 m2, aménagement paysager : 10 782 m2 250 arbres
client : Ministère de la Culture, Secrétariat d’Etat aux Grands Travaux, Etablissement Public de la Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, bureaux d’études : Perrault Associés, Paris : ingénierie architecturale Séchaud & Bossuyt, Paris : structure HGM Guy
Huguet SA, Lyon : gestion technique centralisée Syseca : sûreté sécurité Télécom, Technip Seri Construction, Paris : fluides
Pieffet-Corbin-Tomasina, Paris : économistes A.C.V., Paris : acousticien, Sauveterre : agronome, Eric Jacobsen, Paris : ingénieur
agronome
concours : août 1989, début des études : août 1989, début des travaux : mars 1992, date de livraison : avril 1995, surface du site :
65.300 m2 , surface construite : 365.178 m2, aménagement paysager : 10.782 m2, 250 arbres
budget : 500 000 000 € bt value 1990 3 300 000 000 FF HT
Awards :
Médaille d'argent de l'urbanisme, Paris 1990
Mies Van der Rohe Pavilion Award, Barcelone 1997
Ewha Womans University, Séoul – Korea 2008
Client Ewha Campus Center Project T/F, 328 Jin-Seon-Mi Hall, Ewha Womans University, Site surface: 19,000 m², Built
surface: 70,000 m², Built volume: 350,000 m³, Landscaping: 31,000 m², Start of conceptual design: 2004, Construction start:
2005, Program 'The Campus Valley', The establishment of a campus center for about 22,000 students. - academic program:
classrooms and library, - sport-term project space, student activity support, - administration, - commercial area, sports and
parking area. Above and below the land previously occupied by Ewha Square and the athletic fi eld the new 'Campus
Valley' provides both , Client Ewha Campus Center Project T/F, 328 Jin-Seon-Mi Hall,
Ewha Womans University whaians and prospective female leaders with much-needed space for continuing education and
student services. The campus centre is designed to offer a new sense of direction for higher education in the 21st century. It
establishes organic relations between the enter and surrounding areas of campus as well as between above ground and
underground spaces; and will serve to redefi ne access to the campus from the main road Jung Mun. Flying is the best way
to reach the shores of Seoul Ewha University’s new building (founded in 1886, Ewha welcomes 22,000 female students and is
ranked as one of the best universities in the world), thought and realised by Dominique Perrault, as a result of an
international architecture competition organised in 2003, and inaugurated on April 29th 2008.
A landscape then, more than an architecture work, located in the midst of Seoul’s university area. A campus valley where
nature, sport grounds, event locations and educational buildings mix, intermingle and follow one another. A long asphalted
strip, delineated at one end by a race track, and, completely surrounded by nature. Arranged nature where pear trees and
topiary reign. Black asphalt, red race track, green nature and finally the white brightness of a valley appears. A valley,
which is bravely drawn in the ground, slides down along a gentle slope. At the other end, the slope becomes a huge stairway
which can be used as an open air amphitheatre if necessary.
At the very heart of the valley, a dreamlike immersion takes place. Opposed to the outdoor world, a subtle and serene
universe appears suddenly. Classrooms and libraries, amphitheatres and auditoriums, shops and movement… Everything
follows up with a constant natural light.
Perrault is prone to buried, excavated, nestled places (the French National Library in Paris, the Velodrome and Olympic
swimming pool in Berlin, both built, or the studies for the Kansai Library in Japan and the Cultural Centre in Santiago de
Compostela, Spain…) Perrault has the desire, physically speaking, to appropriate the territory, to mingle the constructed
material with the ground, the desire to exploit to its paroxysm the idea that “concept and matter have to grapple one with
another”.
At Ewha University, Perrault puts one more time in action: words (idea, concept, abstraction, geometry, strategy, tension,
fusion, freedom, simplicity, evidence…), principles (physics, mechanics, dimension…) and commitments (urban concerns,
creation of a location and not only of a building, refusal of formalism, and disappearance of architecture…) which best
qualify his architecture.
With the forthcoming inauguration of Seoul Ewha Womans University, Dominique Perrault attests his intense international
activity (Habitat Hotel in Barcelona, achievement in May 2008, NH Hotels in Milan, November 2008, the European Court of
Justice in Luxembourg, December 2008, the Tennis Stadium in Madrid, May 2009, Donau-City Towers in Vienna, 2010,
Theatre Mariinsky II in Saint-Petersburg, 2010…)
Dominique Perrault blends built and natural environments in a new campus center for the growing student body of Seoul’s
Ewha Womans University.
By Robert Ivy, FAIA
Blurring the line between construction and topography, French architect Dominique Perrault’s campus center for Ewha
Womans University in Seoul, South Korea’s trendy Sinchon district is seamlessly integrated into the sloping hillside it
intersects. At the crux of the prestigious campus, this multitiered, multifunctional hive of activity anchors the site and
creates a landscape of its own.
The unique site is particularly fitting for the school, which was founded by American Methodist missionary Mary F.
Scranton in 1886 and named Ewha (pear blossom in Sino-Korean) by the emperor in 1887 for the abundance of delicate
flora at its original location in the city’s central Chong-dong area. Beyond poetic metaphor, however, necessity was the
mother of this striking structural invention.
Primarily, the existing gated campus of traditional Collegiate Gothic structures, designed in the 1930s by W.M. Vories, the
eponymous, Japan-based architectural design firm of Kansas-born William Merrell Vories, was becoming increasingly
inadequate. Ewha had risen in prominence and size to more than 20,000 students—reputedly the world’s largest private
women’s university. Yet, while its international student body continued to grow, most domestic students were living at home,
many with 2-hour commutes, and the campus lacked sufficient study space or places to gather for long days at school. For
those who did remain on campus, weekends proved disconcertingly lonely and detached. Moreover, the addition of a notable
building would communicate the university’s growing global connection.
Working with a task force, former university president Shin In-ryung established structural and logistical guidelines for the
proposed facility. It would be embedded into the landscape, include bi-level parking and a commercial area on lower levels,
and redefine access to the campus. It was also determined that the project would require a design by an established
international architect. So in February 2004, invitations to compete for the project were sent to a select group of firms from
55