The Namdo Righteous Army History Museum is conceived not only as a building, but as a landscape experience — an act of remembrance embedded in the terrain. It approaches this challenge by creating spaces where a monumental sense of scale connects people with the territory in both physical and emotional ways.

Two images from the competition brief became foundational (Fig. 3). The first was a topographic imprint: a reminder of how the existing Naju Visual Theme Park had radically reshaped the terrain through excavation and earthworks — a landscape soon to be erased. The second depicted local burial mounds — earth-covered tombs marked by solitary stones — revealing how memory and reverence are materially embedded in the land.

Taking these references as a starting point, the museum locates itself in the most anthropized zone of the site. Here, materials from the demolished structures are gathered and reused to construct a new landmark that anchors the masterplan. This gesture is both ecological and memorial: a space where the site’s history and energy are reassembled into a new physical and symbolic form.

The project is a negotiation between monumentality and integration, past and present, permanence and change. The museum, while a destination, does not dominate. Like a clearing in the forest or a sculpture discovered along a path, it emerges quietly. Its relationship with the surrounding artworks and the parkland recalls places where architecture, art, and nature are not separate domains, but part of a single continuum. Here, the experience is never static — it unfolds through movement, light, and time.

At its heart, a silent domed chamber offers a moment of reflection — an abstract room for pausing and honoring our ancestors. This space is neither didactic nor monumental in the traditional sense; instead, it evokes timelessness, like a stone found in the forest, shaped by hands but softened by time.