South Korea’s Médongaule Modern Garden Turns Nietzsche Into Pavilions, Paths and a Maze

Médongaule Garden has opened its Modern Garden in Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, a landscape that translates the ideas of Nietzsche and a roster of other thinkers into architecture, planting and circulation. The new grounds arrive 14 years after the project began and build on the site’s Korean Garden, which opened in September 2025. Together, they push the destination toward its goal of becoming the country’s first dedicated humanities garden.

Where the Korean Garden reworked a traditional garden culture that was cut off by the colonial era and industrialization, the Modern Garden layers a Nietzschean framework on top and opens the conversation to a global audience. The site is organized along two axes. The “Island of Thought” interprets thinkers including Nietzsche, Plato, Saint-Exupéry, Kazantzakis, the Buddha and Levinas through buildings, walking routes and sightlines, and it is meant to send visitors away with new questions rather than fixed answers. The “Story of Korea” landscapes the country’s arc from a nation of scholars through industrialization and democratization to the present, so a personal stroll becomes part of a shared national memory.

Chilean studio Pezo von Ellrichshausen, whose work has been shown at MoMA and the Venice Architecture Biennale, designed the Über House and the garden’s main pavilions. The studio’s buildings are placed to coexist with the terrain instead of dominating it, keeping the landscape as the main event.

The planting comes from Guillaume Gosse de Gorre, a French landscape architect from a family line of garden makers. He visited Korea every season during the design process, studying the angle of the sunlight, the movement of the wind and where each plant would settle. His approach is clearest in the meadow garden, a 25,000-plant field that changes completely from season to season. Korean landscape architect Lee Jae-yeon oversaw the landscaping across both the Korean and Modern Gardens, grounding the international vision in local terrain and sensibility.

The paths carry as much meaning as the buildings. The infinity-shaped “Eternity” mosaic path is pieced together from stones that would otherwise have been thrown away. The “Era of Overcoming” walkway reuses waste concrete in its raw state, and the “Era of Hardship” forest trail deliberately keeps its dead trees standing. Across all three, natural material, time and history become one design vocabulary.

The Über House sits at the garden’s highest point and takes its name from Nietzsche’s Übermensch, giving visitors a full view of the grounds from the summit. Below, a maze garden runs without any signage, so getting lost becomes part of the reflective experience.

The Über House also hosts FATI, a restaurant led by chef Lee Dong-hee, coach of Korea’s national culinary team. The kitchen serves modern Korean food built on a garden-to-table philosophy, using produce grown on site. Médongaule is also launching an annual membership that covers both gardens and adds preview events, docent programs, seasonal content, and food and merchandise perks. The garden plans to add performances, exhibitions and academic programs in the future.

Médongaule’s Modern Garden is open daily except Mondays, with more details available on the official website.

Médongaule’s Modern Garden
1 Medeonggol-gil, Yangdong-myeon
Yangpyeong-gun, Gyeonggi Province
South Korea,
Opening hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.