Büro Ole Scheeren unveils threshold-free concrete gallery for Daegu

By Elena Vasquez

Berlin-based Büro Ole Scheeren has revealed designs for Suseong Continuum, a 364-square-metre concrete gallery for digital art set to open in Daegu, South Korea, for the Suseong International Biennale's 2028 edition.

The Suseong District Government commissioned the project. It will stand in Yeonhwaji park and was unveiled as part of this year's biennale, which invites architects to realise permanent public works across the city. The design remains on show until 22 November.

What does 'without traditional thresholds' mean?

The gallery has no enclosed rooms and no doorways. Büro Ole Scheeren designed it as one continuous space to reflect the "flows" of digital art.

Studio founder Ole Scheeren said: "We wanted to build a gallery without traditional thresholds: a gradient of realities that morph into one another as you gradually move through the space."

He added: "The substance of digital art is not rooted in the physical domain of distinct objects and isolated experiences… it exists in a world of overlaps and connections, where one condition potentially flows into the next."

The studio summarised the concept plainly: "Landscape, circulation and exhibition become a continuous experience."

That framing matters for the 2028 opening because it determines how visitors will physically encounter digital works — not room by room, but along a single unbroken route.

How does the building meet the park?

Visitors will reach the gallery along a winding path, from which the twisting volume emerges as an extrusion. Conceived as a "continuation of the landscape", the building will be partially embedded in the park's topography and oriented toward a nearby lotus pond.

The structure uses board-marked concrete for a rough exterior texture. Inside, the surface shifts to smooth concrete walls suitable for projecting media. According to the studio, both layout and materiality track the transition from the park's natural landscape to the digital interiors.

"Technology is often seen as an opposite to nature," Scheeren said. "With Suseong Continuum we wanted to explore how we can create a way of extending the way we perceive the relationship between both domains – a journey that starts in the park and that seamlessly carries you into the digital realm."

He continued: "There is no single moment where one world ends and the other begins, it is a continuous transformation."

The studio added: "What begins as natural landscape gradually transforms into digital media."

What will the interior look like?

Renders show a stripped-back interior with immersive exhibition spaces framed by curving walls. A layered ceiling will run the building's full length, concealing all lighting and technical infrastructure developed with the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.

"The interior unfolds as a spatial gradient in which light, sound, enclosure and immersion shift gradually along the visitor's route," the studio said.

"Curving walls widen into open spaces and tighten into passages; atmospheres transform rather than switch," it added.

Suseong Continuum joins a growing portfolio of cultural projects by Büro Ole Scheeren in Asia: in Shenzhen the studio has revealed skyscrapers with "waterfall" facades, and its Róng Museum of Arts is currently under construction.