The new Dominique Perrault designed EWHA Woman’s University in Seoul, Korea open this past April. The building began with a design competition in 2004 and was inaugurated four years later.

The following information is from the architect:

‘The establishment of a campus center for about 20 000 students:
- academic program: learning and sport-term project space, libraries, cafeteria
- administration
- commercial area: cinema, theatre, shops as well as external sporting spaces and car parks (20 000 m²).

Above and below the land previously occupied by Ewha Square and the athletic field the new ‘Campus Valley’ provides both Ewhaians and prospective female leaders with much-needed space for continuing education and student services. The campus centre to be constructed is designed to offer a new sense of direction for higher education in the 21st century. It will establish organic relations between the centre and surrounding areas of campus as well as between above ground and underground spaces; and will serve to redefine access to the campus from the main road Jung Mun.’

The following is from the inauguration’s press release:

‘Flying is the best way to reach the shores of Seoul Ewha University’s new building (founded in 1886, Ewha welcomes 22,000 female students and is ranked as one of the best universities in the world), thought and realised by Dominique Perrault, as a result of an international architecture competition organised in 2003, and inaugurated on April 29th 2008. A landscape then, more than an architecture work, located in the midst of Seoul’s university area. A campus valley where nature, sport grounds, event locations and educational buildings mix, intermingle and follow one another. A long asphalted strip, delineated at one end by a race track, and, completely surrounded by nature. Arranged nature where pear trees and topiary reign. Black asphalt, red race track, green nature and finally the white brightness of a valley appears. A valley, which is bravely drawn in the ground, slides down along a gentle slope. At the other end, the slope becomes a huge stairway which can be used as an open air amphitheatre if necessary. At the very heart of the valley, a dreamlike immersion takes place. Opposed to the outdoor world, a subtle and serene universe appears suddenly. Classrooms and libraries, amphitheatres and auditoriums, shops and movement… Everything follows up with a constant natural light. Perrault is prone to buried, excavated, nestled places (the French National Library in Paris, the Velodrome and Olympic swimming pool in Berlin, both built, or the studies for the Kansai Library in Japan and the Cultural Centre in Santiago de Compostela, Spain…) Perrault has the desire, physically speaking, to appropriate the territory, to mingle the constructed material with the ground, the desire to exploit to its paroxysm the idea that “concept and matter have to grapple one with another”. At Ewha University, Perrault puts one more time in action: words (idea, concept, abstraction, geometry, strategy, tension, fusion, freedom, simplicity, evidence…), principles (physics, mechanics, dimension…) and commitments (urban concerns, creation of a location and not only of a building, refusal of formalism, and disappearance of architecture…) which best qualify his architecture.’

For more information and pictures visit: www.perraultarchitecte.com.