Most homes in Seoul are now apartments. This is why the image that comes to mind when we think of houses is typically an apartment. However, just a few decades ago, the housing landscape was diverse—from single-family homes reflecting owners' tastes to red-brick villas and houses combining both traditional Korean hanok and Western styles.
The new book "Architecture Is a Dream Shared by Land and People" compiles writings and illustrations about houses that the architect-authors encountered while seeking out old homes and wandering through alleyways whenever they could, searching for the most comfortable, humane dwellings harmonized with nature—a departure from the apartment-dominated housing landscape across the nation.
The book features emotionally evocative homes including "Casa Saia," which embraces the sea of Jeju; "Geumsan House," an homage to Toegye Yi Hwang's Dosan Seodang study; "Domun Alfre," which resembles the shape of a house over 100 years old; "Sumsum House," designed for living with pets; "Malgeun Gureum Jip" (Clear Cloud House), containing nine single-family units with different family compositions and preferences in one building; and "Cheungcheung Namu Jip" (Layered Tree House), the warmest and coziest home where three generations live together.
While none of the featured homes are alike, they share a common sentiment of being places to quietly stay and share warmth. The authors expressed this as follows, which may capture the essence of what a home truly is: "What is the temperature of a home, and what is the temperature of life? Perhaps it is created by the gathering of things that allow connection without deliberate effort—like the smoke from cooking rice that greets us from afar when returning home after work, like the smell of soybean paste soup our mothers make, like a yard that feels comfortable without tending, like the warmth of words exchanged aimlessly by family members with their feet touching on the heated floor."
Upon reaching the final chapter after appreciating the homes introduced in the book, readers arrive at the question: What exactly is a home to us? While each reader's answer may differ, the authors' answer is "thought" and "time." "Thought can be one's desires or love for family. Rooms, wooden floors, and yards are spaces where such thoughts are expressed, and within them, a family's unique warmth and time overlap, patterns of time are etched, and thus a home is slowly completed through time and thought." Priced at 18,000 won.
