The city Wonju, wherein the project is located, has been a prosperous city since ancient Chosen dynasty. In a historic city with many ruins and beautiful nature, we designed a two distinct houses for a couple in a neighborhood named "Silrim," which means the forest where the gods live on the south side of Mt. Chiak. They have been weekend couples for a long time, each working in a different city. They thought long and hard about where to live before retirement. After researching various areas, they acquired a plot of land with their acquaintances in Wonju. Each person had a different time schedule to build their houses, so it would take some time for both houses to be completed and the village community to be formed.
The couple's husband decided to come here first to build a house and stay, while his wife, who had a job in Seoul, was going to join later. The couple, who got along well but had spent a lot of time apart throughout their lives, had distinctly different tastes. Therefore, the idea came up to create a separate space for the wife and the husband to reflect their tastes within the same plot.
It has been a long-standing practice of traditional Korean dwellings to divide the living space of each family member, but nowadays it is rare to build a separate space between the wife's space(anchae) and the husband's space(sarangchae). This is because there are realistic worries about moving between spaces, such as the fact that it has to be crossed in case of rain or snow, and that functions such as the bathroom, kitchen, and boiler room have to be divided into two. However, the couple's preference for the exterior of the house was clear, and it was easily decided. The husband preferred a simple, modern design, while the wife liked the traditional architectural style with the Numaru (half-storey high floor).
As you walk around the driveway, you'll first see the stucco and zinc roofed ‘sarangchae’, and then back to the courtyard and about half a story high, you'll find ‘anchae’, neatly finished with timber and numaru. At first glance, they appear to be different houses, but they are one house in two parts. Since the height difference of the existing site is retained, you can climb the stairs from ‘anchae’ to the back of ‘sarangchae’ and enter the attic of ‘sarangchae’ directly.
In the old houses, there was a kitchen attached to the main house, but in this case, since the husband of the couple started living first, so he decided to put a large kitchen in his section so that he could cook properly and soak rice wine. The wife planned to spend most of her time reading and relaxing at home, so she made her kitchen small and attached a three-way wide opening Numaru to the most scenic spot in the house.
The view from the top of the hill where Numaru, the center of the house sits, is filled with the spruce trees, which have been the owners of the land since the beginning. The trees are lined up to block the wind from all directions. The name of the house was given in the hope that it would be a house where one can think about and protect the life that one knows and protect the value of the. Originally, it was quoted from an article written by Jeong Yak-yong in the about a certain person's study and the name of the house.
"He looks at something that is not in him, points to it, and says, 'That,' and when he realizes what he has, he looks down and says, 'This.' ‘This’ is what I already have in my body. ... When the Jin (晉文子) completed the house, the elder blessed him, saying, "Sing joy here and also sing sadness here. Remain in permanence [歌於斯, 哭於斯.]"