Cult RoomsThe Water Museum.

For architect Itami Jun, the windy Korean island of Jeju was a sanctuary. Born in 1937 in Tokyo to Korean parents and raised in Japan, Jun often felt caught between his Korean and Japanese identities. Jeju—located to the south of the Korean Peninsula and west of Japan—became a natural second home and Jun found solace in its rugged landscape. 

It was here in the 2000s—the final decade of his life—that he built some of his most beautiful and critically acclaimed works: a golf clubhouse, a hotel, a church and a trio of art museums. Designed for the Pinx resort, the museums are dedicated to the elements that are omnipresent on the island: water, wind and stone. The largest of the three, the Water Museum, was completed in 2006 and is the perfect expression of Jun’s belief that architecture should be a medium between humans and nature.

“The real measure of a space,” Jun once wrote, “lies not in its function but in its ability to evoke a feeling of vitality simply by one’s being there.” The Water Museum is one such space. The simple rectangular concrete building is crowned by an oval roof with a huge opening at its center. Inside, a shallow pool of water serves as a mirror for the sky above. Visitors are invited to walk around a stone pathway that sits flush with the surface of the water, contemplating the clouds, the graceful arc of the roof opening and the gently rippling pool. In this church-like museum, Jun’s architecture becomes art—a place that will change your way of seeing.