A refuge for all out of mind was the title of our contribution to a call for ideas launched in June 2005 by the Domus magazine.

The issue was: what could be done for the completion and functional redefinition of the building of the Ryugyong Hotel at Pyongyang, capital of North Korea.

This hotel is a 330m height pyramid whose construction begun in 1987 and was interrupted at the roughcasting stage.

Our starting point was a ready-made:

a text by Samuel Becket

a historical fact: the famine that started in North Corea and that took the lives of an estimated 2 million people. Our proposition was a 300m long copper gong suspended from the top of the elevator shaft all the way down the building; the staircase was therefore going around it.

The gong has one of its faces covered with 2 million etches, one for each victim, while the other face is plain white thus commemorating also the oblivion of this event.

When one hits the gong, all the people’s souls would be stirred and the gong hanging from the top down expresses the relationship between heaven and earth.

The submittal consisted of two 1m x 1m sheets mounted on foam boards.

The project was part of a selection that was exhibited in Milan and New York.