Mungyeoung World Meditation Village

This project is for a Buddhist mountain retreat for Bongam-sa Temple, near Mungyeong, South Korea, where lay people can study Buddhism and learn meditation. The spectacular site comprises a south facing escarpment and heavily wooded hills rising up from a river valley. A creek runs through the site from the north- east to the south-west. The brief includes three meditation halls, a library, accommodation, visitors centre, café, restaurant and support services. The public buildings are expressed as individual objects in the landscape. The ‘private’ areas are more recessive, and sunk into the landscape and covered in gardens. The accommodation and social spaces are placed south of the creek, which has a more open, flatter character. The steeper, more wooded area on the north side is exclusively for the meditation halls, the gateless gates and the kuti. The three mediation halls ascend the hillside in a hierarchy, with the most advanced space towards the top of the hill. The creek is therefore used as a transitional element between social engagement and meditation, i.e., the transition from human communication to communication with Buddha. A bridge across the creek accommodates the library, the most meditative space of the social areas. In this project, nature is architecture and architecture is nature.