The Hanok and Korean Houses of Our Times
Cho Junggoo’s recent works of Da-On, 10M4D, and Paju k House, can be classified as a memorable achievement, assembling and sorting the results from all of his architectural experiments conducted over the past two decades. Each of these three types of houses – a weekend house in a rural area (Da-On), a workshop house in a small city (10M4D), a house in a suburban area near Seoul (Paju k House) – can be referred to as distinctive examples of Korean single-family detached homes on the contemporary South Korean housing market, all of which dominate the contemporary residential complex.
Deliberate Observations of Quotidian Life
When the architect Cho Junggoo opened his office twenty years ago, he began to spend his time observing and documenting the urban landscape. It was at this time that the (the traditional Korean house) come to the fore, superseding a modern pressure to bow to westernisation in the wake of stagnating development. Cho, who is like a researcher, began his project based on the still remaining in downtown Seoul. And also, like an activist, he made repairs to the old remains. Cho, who became a prominent expert in architecture, still dealt with a large amount of additional work while designing and constructing these , but what really made him become so preoccupied with this traditional house is not just its existence, but its correlation with contemporary urban structures, as if in a state of composing a figure from the city of the past. Living is the main theme behind Cho’s architectural work. Considering the term can be applied to rather a limited range, it is more flexible to refer to ‘quotidian life with elementary activities by nourishing, sleeping, and taking a rest’. His (機間, Functional Space Unit), which should be interpreted as autonomic spatial unit with certain functions preserving the ability to regenerate by itself and maintaining continuity of time.
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