GAD Editorial · Published · · English study · Chinese summary · Study dated 2026-10-09
A large institution does not have to announce all of its accommodation as a single object above ground. Dominique Perrault Architecture repeatedly examines the space between a visible urban figure and the rooms embedded beneath it. Founded by Perrault in Paris in 1981, the practice offers two particularly clear examples in the French National Library and the Ewha Campus Complex in Seoul. Both ask the ground to do architectural work, while producing very different relationships between landscape, movement and enclosure.
The François-Mitterrand library site in Paris is readily recognised by its four corner towers. Equally important is the broad esplanade and the garden enclosed within the complex. The library’s own account describes a forest-like garden, reading rooms and a restrained palette of wood, metal, concrete and glass. A distant view of the towers therefore presents only one scale of the design. Inside, the institution is organised around a much more inward-looking landscape.
The project’s chronology also needs care. The building was inaugurated in 1995, while the study library opened in 1996 and the research library in 1998. Those are different institutional milestones, not interchangeable completion dates. Architecturally, the useful distinction is between the open ground encountered in the city and the controlled environment of study. The garden gives the latter a shared reference without becoming an ordinary route through the centre of the building.
At Ewha Womans University, the Campus Complex was completed in 2008 and inaugurated that April. Perrault’s project was developed with local partner Baum Architects. A long, open valley cuts into the campus, placing substantial accommodation on either side. The university’s own visitor material describes the glass-and-steel valley and its educational, cultural and administrative uses. The exterior space is consequently also an address for rooms that would otherwise be understood simply as underground.
This makes the valley more than an expressive incision. It helps a person read the depth of the building through visible facades and changing levels. The approach is not experienced solely as entering a door in a freestanding wall; the terrain itself becomes part of the arrival sequence. The institutional boundary remains important, however. A campus route and a teaching room have different access requirements, even when architecture brings them into close visual contact.
Our comparison is that Perrault uses open space to give large programmes an intelligible centre. In Paris, the garden supports an inward relationship around reading. At Ewha, the valley makes below-grade accommodation face an outdoor route. These operations should not be reduced to the claim that underground building is inherently sustainable. Excavation, waterproofing, daylight, ventilation and long-term maintenance all remain significant design and construction questions.
For designers, the transferable method is to draw the ground in section with the same attention normally given to a facade. Where does it become a roof? Where does an opening admit light or establish an entrance? Which exterior spaces invite passage, and which are intended to be seen rather than crossed? Perrault’s work makes those distinctions central to the identity of an institution. The result is a useful way to discuss density and landscape together, without assuming that a visually open composition removes the practical boundaries of public use.