Restoring the Past 41
Chapter 4 Gwangju’s Mass-Produced Hanok – Square or Round By Kang Dong-su
2022�06��.indd 41
▲ 1970s Jeonju hanok with a Japanese-style beam structure.
BEAMS AND PILLARS Beams and pillars have long been two of the most symbolic parts of the hanok structure. Regarding the former, long and naturally curved crossbeams are a main charm of hanok that many quickly
Gwangju News, June 2022
ROOF STRUCTURES As I briefly wrote about roof structures in the previous chapter, developers cut down on a lot of processes by not exposing rafters in ceilings (except for attics and sometimes front porches known as toenmaru, 툇마루). By doing that, they only had to plane the eaves and some parts of the house. The second thing we have to look into are square
gwangjunewsgic.com
For traditional Korean architecture, a structure is not just a structure. Depending on social class, there was a strict law regarding the structure of a house. For example, cylinder-shaped pillars were only used for the nobility, important people, or a man’s space in a building, as the round shape represented “sky,” while square pillars represented “earth.” This kind of discrimination in housing structure was based on Confucianism, and this strict hierarchy collapsed in the modern era. This chapter will show you how each structure of Gwangju’s mass-produced hanok developed through the modern period and made its own unique style.
rafters on the edge of eaves called buyeon (부연). In the Joseon Dynasty, only those of high social rank could embellish their houses by adding these items, but starting in the late 19th century, as the new bourgeoisie could build their houses as they saw fit, they freely used these items as a decoration. They were also influenced by exotic styles like Westernstyle buildings or Japanese-Western styles. The people of Gwangju and Jeonnam Province started to make their buyeon rounded on the edge, which was used until the 1970s for mass-produced hanok. This design only exists in this region, and I think it came from Japanese-Western-style wooden buildings or Western missionaries’ houses. Those buildings usually had rounded rafters on the porch, and that style had an influence on newer hanok designed during the colonial period, which survived until the 1990s.
CULTURE & ARTS
L
ast time, we looked at the design history and material of mass-produced hanok roofs in Gwangju. Because it was a mass-production real-estate product, developers tried to adopt the concept of rich, noble people’s houses from the previous period to attract those common people who had a fantasy for roof-tiled houses with proper style and sometimes modified the original design to be better for trade. But they also had to reduce the cost as much as possible to supply the houses fast and affordably for the average individual, which led to a deterioration in structure quality. There are also a lot of ornamental roof details that were mostly derived from colonial period houses in this way.
2022-05-26 �� 3:06:14
