Audeum, a Museum of Sound by Kengo Kuma, Opens in Seoul

Audeum opened on 5 June 2024 in Seocho, a residential district in the south of Seoul, at the foot of Mount Cheonggye. It is a museum of sound reproduction: horns, loudspeakers, amplifiers and music boxes from the 19th century to the present, shown in working order. The building is by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma.

The founder

The museum was established by Michael Chung, a Korean businessman and the founder of Silbatone Acoustics, a maker of high-end amplifiers. Chung is known among audio enthusiasts for one of the world’s great collections of early cinema sound equipment, and he built the museum in memory of his father. It is run by a foundation and charges no admission.

The building

Kuma wrapped the seven-storey building in some 20,000 aluminium pipes of different lengths and thicknesses, hung vertically in overlapping layers. They catch the light differently through the day and have been compared to organ pipes, to rain and to a forest. The architect has described the aim as making a building that is itself an instrument, one that engages all the senses.

The entrance is placed at the bottom of a flight of steps that leads down between stone walls beside running water, so that the noise of the city fades before the visitor reaches the door. Inside, the walls are lined with Alaskan cypress, in stepped panels that improve the acoustics and scent the air. Fabric and soft surfaces are used in the listening rooms. The graphic design and signage are by Kenya Hara.

The collection

The opening exhibition was titled “Jung Eum: In Search of Sound”. Its centrepieces are the theatre systems made by Western Electric in the 1920s and 1930s, including the 12-A and 13-A horns of 1927, the equipment that made talking pictures possible, and the later 16-A system. There are Lansing Iconic loudspeakers of 1937, German Klangfilm systems, a room of music boxes and mechanical instruments, and a library of some 100,000 records.

The visit is a guided listening session more than a walk past cases. Staff play recordings through the historic systems, some of them the size of a room, and the sound, warm and immediate, is the exhibit.

Visiting

Audeum is open from Thursday to Saturday, from 10:00 to 18:00. Admission is free, but places are limited and must be reserved online in advance; slots are released on a fixed schedule and go quickly. The museum is about 30 minutes by taxi from Gangnam and is not close to a subway station.

The building received a Prix Versailles award for museums in 2025. It adds to Seoul’s list of buildings by foreign architects worth a detour, with the Amorepacific headquarters by David Chipperfield.