Lithic Knot - Jeongok Prehistoric Museum
Movement and experience are the primary generators in this design for a Prehistoric Museum in South Korea by London based architectural firm poly.m.ur.
By: poly.m.ur

Jeongokri is one of the most important Paleolithic sites in the world. Lithic Knot is envisaged as a museum structure that is embedded into both the geology and landscape of the site. The design of the museum focuses on the creation of a building fabric that articulates exhibition spaces while connecting scattered outdoor programs across the entire site. The organization of the museum attempts to dissolve traditional boundaries by creating multiple points of connection around each outdoor program.

The museum thus emerges as a place for the interchange of people, experience and information. The twisted 'figure-of-eight' structure of the museum is intended to evoke the crude 'post and lintel' architecture of the stone age albeit with modern systems of construction and materials.


Polymur

Big Dig House Lexington, Mass., 2006
The structural system for this house is almost wholly composed of steel and concrete from Boston’s Big Dig, utilizing more than 600,000 pounds of recycled material, including pieces of the I-93 off-ramps. Large upper-level plantings blur relationships between interior and exterior spaces.



The Big Dig House in particular is an example of Hong and Park’s ability to take risks. They had been given the chance, by a developer willing to try something different, to design the Valentine Houses, a multifamily housing structure in Cambridge. A contractor in charge of destroying the residual materials from the Big Dig’s construction saw the Valentine project and contacted SsD. “He had a junkyard full of concrete and steel and this idea to recycle it into a house,” says Hong. Because Park and Hong’s client was willing to let his home serve as a research project, it was a success. Using over 600,000 pounds of recycled materials, the home has become a prototype for recycling large, heavy materials, and a bit of a curiosity in the area.

Single Speed Design