VERTICAL STREET
Golmok and Jeong
Yeonam-dong is located in the northwest part of Seoul where private houses were built in the 1970s and 1980s by individual owners. Being planned by different owners, each house possesses their own distinctive qualities. Meanwhile, the construction methods and measures were surprisingly similar since what Koreans call 'house sellers', constructors who built many houses with the same technic and materials in the low budget were prevalent.
Site Analysis
The characteristics of these houses and the blocks and villages they form are still apparent in the area. Each house shows different orientations, entrances, gardens which leads to different relationships towards the roads and the the neighborhood. These form of old Korean housing and block layout, referred as Golmok, is disappearing due to massively built highrise apartments and condos. While new living style is more convenient than Golmok, this form of living is more Korean like, meaning more involved and caring about neighbors, with the existence of Jeong, Korean concept of warm human affection. In other words, this Golmok system apparent in Yeonam-dong has quite original value of Korean society and neighborhood. This projects focuses on how this different relationships between housing units and the neighborhood can be translated into vertical, stacked-up co-housing form. Breaking from former system of multi-story apartments and suggesting new form of vertical living space which reflects essence of Korean Goalmok is the goal of the project.
building design process diagram
building design process diagram
building design process diagram
building design process diagram
Circulation
Each unit is accessible from either first or the third floor where front and back gardens are located. This reflects the characteristics of golmok, which is that houses on a row can have different directions of entrances and orientations. In typical vertical buildings, an apartment, for example, circulation areas take up a large portion of the total area and these areas are most of the time unoccupied. As the right diagram below shows, in the Vertical Golmok, houses can have different orientations and dynamic circulation. Houses will not have repetitive floor plan without distinctive characteristics. Also, each unit has its own green gardens at the entrance. Like in golmok, various and distinctive access and orientation converge into a block, the Vertical Golmok building.
Unit Diversity
Five different types of units and two approach direction, the first floor from the front and third floor from the back, allows various of different housing plans. In the Vertical Golmok, the total of nine different housing forms is included. Same colored units offer the same user experiences. And housing plans with two floors can either be accessed from the lower floor or the upper floor, which distinct their types.
In the Vertical Golmok, five different basic types of floor plans exist. For two-story plans, two different possibilities exist in vertically arranging the plans. And for all of those possibilities of floor plans and their arrangement, two different possibilities exist due to two types of the circulation system. The combination of floor plan prototypes and circulation system, the Vertical Golmok provides a wide variety of housings in a simple rectangular apartment building. Also, there are no hallways in the Vertical Golmok, each unit functions like a detached house with its own entrance and garden.
Social Mix and Unit Distribution
Five different units are distributed to achieve a social mix of families with different lifestyles. And the total of nine distinctive plan types is mingled into the Vertical Golmok. There are 19 units in total with 9 Large Family Units, 5 Small Family Units, 5 Single and Studio Units. This portion reflects the family types and populations of the Yeonam-dong where most of the living populations are families. Vertical Golmok uses the distinctive and dynamic circulation system to suggest unconventional interlock of units. While most of the vertical form of housings provide little chance of mingle between different floors, this vertical Block allows a vertical mix of units. The Vertical Golmok resembles the former mix and mingles of the Vertical Golmok where dynamic circulation enables villagers to interact with more people in the block.
