Amore Pacific is the largest South Korean cosmetics company, and in this case it means more than the usual dominance in the national market: South Korea leads the world in the consumption of cosmetics per capita. In its products, Amore Pacific combines the latest research with tradition, including attention to the whiteness of the skin, for Koreans, a sign of aristocracy. This approach is supported by the existence of a huge collection of historical items related to the "female theme" - clothing, cosmetics, jewelry, "props" of the tea ceremony, and this collection contains many works of national importance.
To look at the buildings of Alvaro Siza and entrust him with the project of the museum for his collection, the owner of Amore Pacific came to Portugal specially. After his visit, active work on the project began, and the enthusiastic customer bought more and more land in the center of Seoul. However, that first project remained on paper.
A 40-minute drive from Seoul, in the city of Yongin, Amore Pacific has huge properties - a whole campus, the territory of which eventually became the site of construction.
There appeared a laboratory building made of gray granite, a brick building for an educational center for employees, where there is also a "museum" for displaying a small part of the collection (the rest of the items are stored in the underground tier), a small residential building for researchers and employees from other parts of the country who have visited the campus and a hotel for guests of a higher rank, as well as two multifunctional pavilions.
As Siza himself admits, since childhood he dreamed of becoming a sculptor, but entered the Faculty of Architecture so as not to upset his father. This, perhaps, is the secret of his method. Perfectly calculated proportions, tremendous attention to detail, play of volumes and masses, light and shadow, brutal architecture that hung in a few seconds before "landing".
The future has arrived - it has already arrived long ago, that's why it seems to be something familiar and well-meaningful. You can even talk about his language, understandable to everyone, but not yet amenable to reproduction - the language of Alvaro Siza's architecture.
