Despite its location, on the outskirts of the city and in the surroundings of the World Martial Arts Park, the new National Museum does not intend to be just an isolated building in front of a privileged natural environment, but a small urban fragment that speaks of the historic city, of the public space, halfway between a building and a fragment of the city.

The Museum takes as a reference the principles of matt-buildings, where an apparently rigid grid ends up producing an open, flexible, spontaneous scheme, resulting in a building without facades per se, and which will relate to its surroundings in a more natural and free way.

The pre-existence of three tall Zelkovas specimens will mark the site of the new Museum. On this site, a new open plaza will become the main public space. With two public accesses from a covered area, its program is divided into two main areas connected through a suspended space that will enjoy the best relations with the site. The smaller set concentrates the more public and administrative character, while the main body houses the entire exhibition program of the Museum that opens to the landscape in its most representative rooms. As in a kind of traditional Korean house, the route through the rooms encloses a large wooded inner courtyard that will also ensure the enjoyment of nature inside.

The materiality of the Museum will again resort to tradition. Stone materials, ceramics on the façade or metallic finishes on roofs will recall their vernacular use in noble houses and palaces throughout so many cultures settled in their territories.