Mansudae Assembly Hall Introduction
The Mansudae Assembly Hall, Pyongyang, is the seat of the Supreme People’s Assembly. The building and its contents are on a remarkable scale, oversized desks, carpets, doorways, and chandeliers.
Mansudae Assembly Hall ARCHITECTURE
White granite and marble exterior building, straight clean lines, a powerful building likely based on Soviet interpretations of classic architecture but mixed with Korean elements. It was completed in 1984.
CHANDELIERS and LIGHT
The Assembly Hall is full of part futuristic, part art-nouveau handcrafted home-made glass chandeliers attributed to Nampo Glass, however, this factory closed in the 1970s but their design is pure DPRK.
CARPETS
How to cover the floor space of 45,000 square metres is always going to be a problem. The main covering is terrazzo but many of the rooms have the Korean answer to Axminster carpets, their hand made woven carpets in their wild and wonderful colour scheme, oversized peony flower pattern are artworks in themselves.
SCULPTURES
The main hall has a sculpture of Kim Il Sung which is to be expected but perhaps more interesting is the entrance hall. In Europe it would be lined with dignitaries whereas in the DPRK it is sculptured who make up the backbone of the Workers Party of Korea- the peasant, worker (coal miners), and intellectual (architect/planner) and overseeing this a tableau of military figures, all set in arches and on pedestals to give them the heights over mere mortals.
