THE WHOLE AND THE PARTS

Urban Housing Complex Planning

Competition • Summer 2012

This is a social housing project looking for a new housing typology in South Korea. As the current housing system in South Korea has raised the lack of communication between neighbours and no longer responds to the contemporary needs. The project aims to redefine the meaning of living together while at the same time protecting an individual’s privacy by providing a wide variety of community and public spaces which might be merged and blurred, allowing the possibility of a more dynamic, interactive, social, and playful way of living in a city. The proposal starts the investigations into the existing housing typologies and various possibilities of new typology for this more complicated society that encourages people to interact and collaborate one another.

JUSTIFIED GRAPH | SPACE SYNTAX

The aim of this study is to find out the typical types in social housing in South Korea, understanding of the existing characters of unit-plans throughout the classification of the graphs and relations between rooms, units and patterns. The analysis is based on typical floor plans in multi-dwellings in Korea and Space Syntax Theory was introduced as a tool.

THE MODERN URBAN LANDSCAPE

South Korea has developed a very unique urban landsacpe over the past 60 years. A current housing system has improved the quality of life in a way, but it has caused more social problems and formed monotonous backgrounds and environments for living together.

FLOOR PLAN | SMALL SCALE

A wide range of floor plans is proposed to accommodate in the appropriate way of living. A dwelling unit for the contemporary society should be different from existing standard floor types. The seed unit, 3x3m square, is transformed and expanded to create spatial characteristics and to accommodate different types of dwellers.

NEW URBANSCAPE | UNITY WITHIN VARIETY

The current housing typology emerged in 1970s has produced repetitive and duplicated urban scenery and individual city has lost its sense of architectural identity. This new typology stimulates its unity within variety, opening up the possibility for housing in South Korea.

SITE PLAN | THE WHOLE AND THE PARTS

This new social housing complex creates a new urban community by developing dwelling unit typologies and responding to emerging complexities of a urban context in Seoul, Korea. Standardised collective housing was introduced in the 1970s to accommodate growing urban population in Korea. However, social system now in Korea has been entirely changed and there is a number of demands for a new type of collective dwellings. The project proposes a new way of living together.