A recent competition earlier in 2009 held by the city of Chungju in South Korea made a call for a memorial space in the city’s United Nations Peace Park. Coming in at 3rd place was London-based firm ACME with their dramatic hive-like design. Drawing from the very core of what the United Nations is, this building is comprised of individual cells combined together to form a cube structure, mirroring how the UN is made up of individual countries who come together to form one entity. ACME’s proposal also includes an idyllic green roof and plenty of natural daylight.
The structure is built from hexagonal cells on the exterior as well as throughout the interior. Built as a metaphor for how the UN operates and functions, this memorial space is meant to “represent the nature of the organization, where many different nations come together to create one entity, but without losing their individual identities.” Inside there are two conference halls, a theater, an exhibition space and an assembly hall for 1,500 people. The cellular design will also serve as a multi-function meeting space and house offices, restaurants, meeting and educational space as well as public viewing platforms.
An open staircase winds up the exterior of the building and leads all the way up to the roof, where a public garden and green roof await. Rooms, meeting space and public areas are all well lit by natural daylight. We’re quite taken with this design proposal and considering it received 3rd place, we’d love to know what the first and second place designs were.
Via Designboom
6 Responses to “ACME United Nations Memorial Space Inspired by Cells”
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It is indeed a nice idea of aggregation of spaces growing from the central void. The transitions inside the building look pretty amazing. I would like to stay in that public area in the middle looking to the top. Cool project!
Inspired by cells? Gimme a break. They’ve finally discovered a voronoi script and ran wild with it.
not even, just hexagons–two, maybe three angles–pretty certain this was all hand-CAD. Looks like a bad riff on HdeM’s “zen space” but ambiguous about whether it wants to be a cladding/facade system or a volumetric (cellular) system.
Unbelievable looking.
Interesting concept on the relation to how the UN operates and functions.
Hopefully the open staircase and open rooftop don’t cause problems.
Very aesthetically pleasing.
Nice looking building, I enjoy the reference to creating the building similar to how the UN operates and functions, nice metaphor. Hope the building turns out how it is planned. The open stairway and roof could cause problems but hopefully not. Environmentally friendly building it also probably makes for interesting social interaction.
Where can the first and second place designs be viewed?