Namdo Righteous Army Museum
The Namdo Righteous Army Museum aims to capture the spirit of the non-hierarchical and informal structure of the righteous army.
Years of incremental growth have lent the place inherent qualities of being incomplete, asymmetrical, and fragmented. The proposal’s primary strategy is to unify these disparate parts into a museum complex by elevating the movement route and landscape as integral experience generators. The intervention facilitates the integration of the portions while retaining their distinct characteristics.
An open-air museum breathes new life into the former cultural park and open-air theatre that reflects the organisational structure of the righteous army. This museum celebrates the present while reclaiming the past and the memory of the existing buildings by designing it as a navigation experience through the landscape. Restoring and repurposing the existing buildings allows the museum to remain local while resisting globalisation.
The site’s gateways provide multiple thresholds and form four quadrants that can accommodate a variety of programmes. The current hierarchy, through the museum is thus redistributed across the landscape. The scattered character of the building facilitates the traditional garden design method of “changing scenarios with changing methods” by curating a movement path through the landscape.
It integrates transformed traditional buildings with the landscape resources of the site. The museum complex, which faces east and overlooks the river, is connected to the Daya plain. It connects two bodies of water along the way: the river on the east and the reservoir on the west.
The journey through the thresholds (gateways) slowly builds up and the release is manifested as a viewing platform which opens onto the forest. A westward ascending route connects the platform to the museum stay, providing a panoramic view of the entire museum complex and the landscape.