The Phyongnam Noodle House, situated in the picturesque Moran Hill area, was renovated into a magnificent monumental edifice, offering a glimpse into the national feature.
This house is associated with the footprints of Chairman Kim Jong Il.
On several occasions, the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un ensured that all knotty problems such as designing, construction and supply of construction workforce and materials were resolved so as to rebuild it into a wonderful facility as befits a catering establishment for the people.
From the viewpoint of architectural formation, the house is characterized by the unique combination of the form of national architecture and its surrounding topographical features.
Section chief Kim In Hyok and other designers from the Pyongyang Urban Designing Institute, which has supported the Party’s construction policy in practice, made a contribution to building the house into an architecture with Korean-style gabled roofs with a total floor space of 10 000 square metres.
The noodle house was situated opposite the main road of the city and the Friendship Tower and had a steep slope on its back. So its flat area was absolutely small. In other words, it was situated on a narrow area over a complicated terrain.
Given the situation, it was by no means easy to find a reasonable method for solving knotty problems that might be unavoidable in construction work, in addition to ensuring formative and artistic effects of the building in designing.
Having set a goal of building it into a Korean-style facility national in form and socialist in content and sustaining modernity and magnificence, they completed the design one by one.
The goals for designing were as follows:
To maximize the flat area by cutting off the slope of the hill on the back,
To increase the number of floors by arranging buildings in a terraced form along the terrain features so as to ensure formative and artistic representation,
To create a courtyard by leaving its original terrain features intact.
But the planned ground for the courtyard was very narrow as the offices and rest rooms for the employees would be arranged on the second floor.
They placed a girder on the pillars of the first floor and laid a floor so that the area could be used for a storehouse. And they finished its cover with coloured concrete blocks so as to create a gathering and resting space for the employees.
In particular, they removed the old buildings and built terraced Korean-style buildings, which go well with its surrounding environment and topographical features, thus providing modernity, magnificence and formative and artistic effects.
In volume and plane planning they put the main stress on dividing the plane area mainly into service and management sectors and making a convenient work flow of employees and dinners, thus arranging eight dining halls, Taedonggang beer bar, seven kitchens and other spaces and rooms.
The course of designing the Phyongnam Noodle House offers a clear proof that the formation of exterior and volume and floor plan are possible if the topographical features are studied in depth and reflected on a design.