Hanok, Stacked: An Alternative Urban Housing for the New Family

Abstract

Around the world the concept and the demographics of ‘family’ have been changing. Especially in the developed countries, the 4-person heterosexual nuclear family ideal has begun to break down with increasing interests in alternative forms of family. Such is also the case in South Korea where there is a dramatic increase in the number of one-person households and complementing decrease in the number of 4-person households. The current state of the country’s housing stock, however, is yet to respond to this demographic shift. Within this context, this thesis seeks to propose a new form of urban housing in Seoul, Korea that better accommodates the shifting population and its needs. Specifically the project studies the district of Mapo, Seoul where there has been increasing political and social momentum to redefine the notion of family by challenging the nuclear family lifestyle. It draws parallels between the more fluid and dynamic ‘family’ lifestyles of Mapo and the extended family lifestyle that belonged to the pre-industrial Korean society. The defining domestic architecture of that time, Hanok, or traditional Korean courtyard houses, is incorporated into the project as the guiding principle. In order to respond to the urban density needs as well as to translate spatially the social dynamics that take place within more amorphous and multi-scaled types of families, this thesis experiments with vertical stacking of the Hanok typology. It utilizes the spatial flexibility and connectivity of Korean traditional courtyard houses to create fluid and porous housing for the arising new types of families in Korea.