Abstract
This project examines South Korean preservation practices applied to hanok: vernacular wooden structures built during the Joseon (Chosŏn) Dynasty (1392–1910) through the first half of the twentieth Century. The analysis will evaluate preservation policies, practices and methodologies as products of relationships between heritage management institutions, communities inhabiting architectural heritage sites, vested interests’ land development projects, varying levels of awareness of heritage building values, and the understudied features of hanok architecture. The project illustrates the analytical and evaluative issues with case studies that reveal architectural design driven by sophisticated, yet under-stated aesthetics, interwoven with multi-disciplinary intellectual and multi-faceted scientific factors to an extent unique in East Asian architecture. The preservation zones selected to further illustrate this project offer unique case studies of architecture intrinsically tied to people in ways that are distinct in the cache of world heritage sites. This research expands on institutional definitions regarding proper preservation methods or policy by reintroducing traditional techniques that have evolved over centuries for maintaining the structure: technologies largely neglected in current preservation policies and procedures.
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Notes
- 1.
This initial definition of hanok and the subsequent discussion of its various architectural and structural elements is knowledge that the authors compiled through on-site field surveys and interviews in South Korea.
- 2.
The term 사랑 (舍廊) actually refers to the management of activities. Since men were most commonly in charge of households, the term “male quarters” has remained popular in defining the space. However, one must not discount the possibility of women using the space for management of affairs as well. For more information on the role of women and property management, please consult: Martina Deuchler 1992. The Confucian Transformation of Korea: A Study of Society and Ideology. Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University.
- 3.
Variations depend on the “class” of the resident family: an important aspect not fully understood is the use of rooms (i.e. divided by “person” rather than by function).
- 4.
An alternate way to write ondol is 温炕, where the second character (炕: literally “heatable brick bed”) refers to the materials used. “突” (dash, move forward quickly, suddenly, abruptly) refers to the system of flues utilized and is pronounced dol 돌, the indigenous Korean word for stone or rock. The dissonance in definition and pronunciation of either character accounts for the creation of alternate spellings, but “突” captures the complex functions of the system.
- 5.
Furthermore, this relationship between the center and the strong sense of regionalism during the majority of Korea’s history is a recent exploration among academics, and has yet to be fully developed within scholarship.
- 6.
During this time the architecture may have been influenced by Japanese elements, but more importantly, the fascination and incorporation of Western elements begin to take on a decidedly Korean “flavor.” Again, this period of architectural history is woefully understudied.
- 7.
The rhetoric surrounding the perception of hanok as irreparably “primitive,” and the vested interests that benefit from such an attitude has thwarted both the study of hanok, its preservation, and intelligent development of adaptive reuse regarding hanok features.
- 8.
This is not the case for historic villages like Yangdong and Hahoe, however, it must be noted that the elder residents in Bukchon contrast with the current generation in terms of depth of knowledge and adherence to conservation principles inherent in the structures’ original design.
- 9.
Please refer to Harvard University’s Chinese Local History database: http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chnlocal/.
- 10.
The lack of Korean sources is the result of a paucity of research in Korean useful for the paper’s aim. We have been unable to identify Korean sources that professionally deal with preservation/conservation of hanok, other than those works that touch on rebuilding or promoting new construction projects. There is a proposal and report from City Hall to the Korean UNESCO Committee advocating for the recognition of the Bukchon area as a preservation success, however, the document is not available to the public in its entirety; this paper addresses some of the contradictions that the proposal/report claims as they appear in piecemeal fashion in select news articles. For these reasons, we endeavored to write on the topic of “hanok” with an emphasis on how the study of these structures can augment knowledge useful for their conservation when the focus of research is directed away from agendas that privilege new construction, tourism, and/or branding, and, instead, concentrates on achieving an academic exploration of the structures.
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Barrera, P.N., Bartholomew, P.E. (2015). Anthropology of Design: How Traditional Korean Architecture Expands the Terms of Conservation, Collaboration, and Sustainable Management. In: Toniolo, L., Boriani, M., Guidi, G. (eds) Built Heritage: Monitoring Conservation Management. Research for Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08533-3_24
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