Architecture and Urbanism in Modern Korea

Chapter 2 The Genesis of Urban Housing

When the concept of modernity began to pervade everyday life, threatening traditional patterns, fundamental changes began to take place in the housing sector. This may explain why a concern with housing problems has been prevalent across the mainstream of modern architecture, ranging from the Arts and Crafts movement in England to the Bauhaus in Germany. Many architects looked deeply into the essential aspects of what would become modern housing and established major principles for realizing new architectural forms. In most countries, the modernization process involved three changes in the housing sector. First, new housing types were developed in response to serious housing shortages. When the Industrial Revolution brought ever-increasing numbers of people to urban areas, the acute housing shortages that resulted led to massive overcrowding in migrant districts, worsening sanitation, and other social ills. In the face of these challenges, modern architects responded with innovative ideas for housing, revolving around functional arrangements, standardization of components, and the installation of many new conveniences. They focused on establishing minimal living standards together with mass production of housing materials. It was expected that the industrialization of the building process would deliver technological benefits at lower costs. To address inner-city or urban-fringe housing shortages, public authorities also intervened when necessary to develop standardized housing for new urban residents. The second change in the housing sector was closely associated with the development of new lifestyles. Together with a rapid increase in the urban populations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in western Europe, a new middle class emerged as the principal clients for professional architects. The lifestyle of this urban middle class was fundamentally different from that of the aristocratic class,1 resulting in a twofold shift in urban life. First, living and working spaces were no longer coexistent in the dwellings. Unlike traditional housing that often included workshops as well as storage and annexed service rooms, modern homes turned into a family-centered private space. Work and leisure gradually separated into discrete realms, and modern parks and leisure facilities began to emerge in towns, and then in the suburbs.2 Second, as the nuclear family became a privileged social unit, the importance of a family’s privacy became enshrined, with comfort and convenience taking precedence over formal manners in the domestic space. Accordingly, there were two contrasting changes in housing design. The first was to underline the independence of individual rooms, and the second was to integrate common areas into an open space. Both continued to act as a leitmotif in modern housing. The third major change in the housing sector came about through the development of modern heating systems and hygienic facilities, many of them invented to address specific urban problems. The heating system in English houses before the 1850s, for example, was mainly fireplaces fueled by coal, causing the urban environment to be heavily polluted by smoke and dust. Rampant epidemics had been traced to inadequate supplies and the faulty hygiene of common drinking water. Around the 1870s, water closets and gas stoves were introduced into English middle-class homes, and the functional arrangements of the kitchen and bathroom have been considered important factors in housing design ever since. This meant that a huge change in traditional housing was inevitable. Colonial Korea underwent a similar transformation as new technologies began to be applied to Korea’s traditional homes. In East Asia, the transformation of the housing sector first occurred through the development of transitional formsofdwellingthatcombinedtraditionalandmodern characteristics. Lilong housing in Shanghai, which debuted in the latter half of the nineteenth century, is a prominent example. While its origins can be traced to the spatial concepts and construction methods of traditional dwellings in southeast China, the stimulus for its development was Shanghai’s expansion in the 1870s. By 1949, lilong housing had accounted for 60 percent Chapter 2 The Genesis of Urban Housing 24 Architecture and Urbanism in Modern Korea of all dwelling areas in the city.3 Urban hanok, the most popular form of urban housing in Seoul from the 1930s to the 1960s, is comparable to lilong housing in many respects. These transitional types of dwelling are notable because they provide insights into the essential features of traditional housing and also demonstrate how those features were assimilated into a modern way of life. In particular, development of the urban hanok marked the inauguration of urban housing in Korea. Urban Housing before Modernization Until the late 19th century, Korea was an agrarian country where most living spaces were dispersed around...