By Paul Miles
Published: March 22 2008 01:25 | Last updated: March 22 2008 01:25
In South Korea, as worldwide with vernacular architecture, the style varies across the country according to extremes of weather.
In the north, where winters can be severe, the homes have walls made of mud bricks or logs and roofs of clay tiles. Sometimes there is an outer wall of reed-like sticks to keep snow from blocking doorways. Rooms are laid out in a rectangular back-to-back floor plan, huddled together to keep warm.
On Jeju island, 64km off the coast of South Korea, however, homes are built to take a mild but windy climate into account. There are a few hundred traditional and simple homes, or saetjip, once the abodes of farmers, on this volcanic speck, now a popular honeymoon and diving destination for Koreans.
Walls are made of local volcanic rocks – which studies have shown offer better insulation than concrete – and the low, rounded thatched roof is lashed down with twine. Surrounding garden walls protect from the island’s strong winds.
A typical Jeju island dwelling has an open courtyard in the middle of the floorplan; a central open-sided area called a sangbang where families worship ancestors, welcome guests and eat, usually sitting on the stone or clay floor.
Korean homes are famed for their traditional underfloor heating system, ondol, which dates back over four centuries. The warmest spot to sit on the floor, nearest the fire, is reserved for honoured guests. Heat comes from a wood-fired stove in the kitchen and the warm smoke swirls under the masonry floor, drawn across by the upright chimney on the other side of the house.
This underfloor system, or hypocaust, serves a dual purpose as, in summer, it cools the house by allowing for air circulation. Made of clay, it also absorbs humidity from the air.
Traditional floor coverings on the ondol would be made from oiled paper or, in wealthy households, from fine silk. Today they are more likely to be modern laminates.
Temperature control is a recurring theme in South Korean architecture and decor. In the grand houses of royalty and government officers, large doors hinged back to turn closed rooms into open courtyards and at night men would sleep cuddling a chukpuin, or “bamboo wife”: a woven cylinder of split bamboo allowing air to circulate near the body.
Other factors have influenced the evolution of Korean vernacular. The strictures of Confucianism and its belief that men and women should live separately played an important part in house design. Homes had distinct areas for men and women and, in some grander houses, the eldest son had the best room.
The principles of feng shui were also important, both in siting villages (they should have sheltering mountains around them and water flowing nearby), and applied to interior décor. Keen proponents used it to determine where to place their bed.
According to the authors of the book Hanoak: Traditional Korean Homes, your head should be in the east for riches, west for poverty, south for long life and north for short life.
“Needless to say, most people slept with their head in the south and east,” says the author.
paul@paulmiles.co.uk
For more information on South Korean homes, see ‘Hanoak: Traditional Korean Homes’, by J.S. Choi, Hollym International, £49.95.
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