Geology Museum of The Basalt Region in Southeast

Impressed by the diversity of geological values and the significance of the life-forming timeline as well as the connection between basalt and humans for millennia, however, few people know that the coolness of lava flow causes it to “survive” again after all these years bearing from wounds on each slice of basalt by human’s machines and the environmental pollution. From my perspective – an architecture student, I claim that restoring the meaning of the land is an urgent and practical issue that contributes to the general social development in the modern context at the moment.

The chronicles of the basalt isn’t something of the abstract and colossal as one might think, it is, in principle, a spatial impression of sedimentary formations. From which, the reason why basalt has an important role in the life of both humans and all living things alike.

The site of the Basalt museum is located at Tan Cang mining field, Bien Hoa city, Dong Nai province in the Southeast economic region which is at a junction of biodiversity, with an abundance of habitats of both the Central Highlands regions and the Mekong Delta alluvial plains. The basalt here does not have a bright red colour like the common plateaus, but a cool grey tone, indicative of a once active flow of lava. The site for the museum is also located at the old Basalt mine, thus creating the opportunity for a re-connection between the human, nature and the architecture.

The building is situated on a rock cliff that has seen decades of excavation, taking advantage of both the depths and scale of the site, along with the characteristic layers of the basalt formation which has the extremely impressive and unique stratigraphic geomorphology.

The building, while mirroring its context and resembling a rough basalt mass, weaves together the roughness of the rock edges and the fine edges of the vertical shafts, which function as the main circulation and exhibition areas where the natural light continuously shines inside since its implication of the living organism, stone and earth between the past and the present. These vertical elements also act as light shafts, creating a play of light and shadow and extending the depths of the space. However, the work does not create a cliché but calculates solid – hollow, light – dark arrays to create depth in both space and light. Inside the work, guiding the visitors through a series of interstitial ambience spaces that highlight and emphasise the raw beauty and ecological value of basalt and nature as a whole.

Beside its main function to preserve and conserve the local geology, the museum also aims to restore the mine and introduce geotourism which a tourism branch is being significantly and internationally developed in not only the particular Southeast region but also the general Vietnam’s tourism.