RE-HANOK-IZATION

South Korea is a relatively small country of roughly 38,000 miles^2 which to put it into perspective is about half of the state of Florida, this country has a GDP ranking of 12 worldwide. From an architectural prospective, this country has the resources to build new & innovative structures. And South Korean’s have been doing so by modernizing commercial buildings and they have enlisted the services of famous architects from around the world such as Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando, & Richard Meier. What about their most commonly used buildings? Out of the 30% of land that is buildable in South Korea, residential apartments span from coast to coast. In my journey of rediscovery, I stumbled across the concept of Hanok. These homes are one story and their shape is determined by the surrounding location. These homes are built using the natural surrounding materials like wood & earth. Hanok homes rely heavily on the joints between the woods and the weight of the roof on the structural columns. However after the reconstruction in the 1970s, in order to face the need for housing, Hanoks have been gradually substituted by apartment buildings. This thesis explored an Eastern country and its history, culture, and architectural traditions in order to create a modernized version of Hanok housing. Through the Re-Hanok-ization process the thesis created an entirely new apartment setting that has never been created before in South Korea. By incorporating South Korea’s traditional construction methodology with today’s technological advances the thesis has created an entirely new building. The thesis has fully explored the structural limitations of modern engineered wood & also integrated the traditional construction methods used in Hanok homes to create a mid-rise building that would never have been possible in the past