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My Cultural Project

Posted by Becky Chen on April 16, 2016 at 12:30pm

     For my cultural project, I researched on Korean traditional houses, or hanok (한옥). I found these houses interesting, mainly for their scientific design and practicality. Some unique features of the house include an underfloor heating system (온돌), the use of open wooden floors (마루) to foster community among the inhabitants, and the special paper (한지) windows for ventilation. The main concept of hanoks is to welcome nature into the home and to incorporate it into the occupants’ lives: that is, the Korean people believe that human and nature should willingly coexist. This idea is different from most Western style homes, where there’s usually a fine line between home and the outside world.

     Nowadays, traditional hanoks are less common due to the industrialization of South Korea after the 1960s. Although many hanoks have been demolished and replaced with apartment complexes, there has been a recent renewed interest in environmentalism and Korean history in South Korea, so modern hanoks have emerged. Impressed with the functionality and efficiency of hanoks, some Western architects have even incorporated elements of the hanok design, such as the ondol system, into their own projects.

     I chose this topic for my cultural project, because I was curious about the way that Korean people think. And, I thought "what better way to find out than to look at how they live ?" And so, I decided to study Korean homes. After completing this project, I learned that the Korean people, as a collective whole and perhaps more so the past generations, are very resourceful and incredibly knowledgeable about human well-being to come up with such clever designs. I mostly appreciated their use of the floor and value of empty space, because it’s humbling and suggests that people don’t need materialistic goods to spend good quality time together. For soju, though, that’s another story.

 

My Hanok presentation (descriptions in notes section of each slide): 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4C94ZXjSLU7bUY3WFVVSGJWXzg/view?usp=sharing

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