Korean architecture
interaction with the wind, and the ergonomic designs, suitable to the lifestyle. Korean architecture blends itself into the nature surrounding it as well as the people that use the facility. Instead of extensive demographic research or scientific proofs, the Hanok used centuries of experience and interaction to become adapted to be a modular exemplar of ergonomically engineered housing. For a house to be suitable for living, it is required to be fit to the lifestyle of its people and to accommodate them to its fullest. One of these characteristics is the system of Chae and Kan in the Hanok. This feature is one of the boldest differences between western architecture and traditional Korean architecture. Traditionally and currently, European homes have been structured as a single building with multiple rooms. Occasionally, there will be external attachments such as a storage space or a garage that extends beyond the house. With the main buildings all collected together, in front, behind, or around it is the garden, usually filled with grass and other vegetation. Inside the house are divisions that we know as rooms, each dedicated for a purpose such as bedrooms, guest rooms, or living rooms. This method of building and divisions within the house is a widely accepted concept that most pieces of housing architecture share today. Even in Korea, where most houses are apartments, the idea of a single building that is distributed into portions remains strong. 4 The words ‘Chae’ and ‘Kan’ can be directly translated into
‘block’ and ‘room’. The Kan is very similar to the concept of rooms that is familiar to us today: they are divisions that separate the interior into multiple sections according to need. However, the Chae is likely to be a very new concept to western architecture: they are blocks of buildings that are separate from each other, but all collect to form a house. While western architecture visualizes a house as a single building, traditional Korean architecture defines a house as a collection of buildings that are surrounded by a wall, or Dam in Korean.
One may wonder why it is beneficial to have a house separated into multiple parts instead of within a single unit, especially when they are being shared by a family. Koreans in the times of the Hanok believed that this was the superior way of housing for one main reason: the necessity of privacy and distance between members of the family. Those that live with their family will strongly agree that there is inevitably friction between individuals of the household, ranging from small disagreements to major disputes. To reduce this collision of people, Koreans preferred living slightly further away from one another, in a different Chae. Nevertheless, this does not cause social distance that separates the family in any way, as a surrounding wall group these buildings together to create a sense of unity inside the family. 5
4 Image from: http://m.gjnews.com/view.php?idx=29578 (Accessed: 02/05/22). 5 Shin D H, 2022, Interview in Research of Features of the Hanok.
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