Tittle : Ssangdalri House
- Architect: Hyunjoon Yoo Architects
- Team: HyunjoonYoo, Jinsung Heo, Insil Son, Sungeun Hwang
- Location: 191, Ssangdal-ri, Jeongan-myeon, Gongju-si, Chungcheongnam-do, Korea
- Client : Junwon Lee
- Project Area : 710.01 sqm
- Photographer: Youngchae Park
Feng Shui
This house is for the early fifties couple. The husband decided to move to the rural area from the city after he received the diagnosis of wife’s cancer. The family needs a retreat house. Therefore, he chose the site based on the “Feng Shui”, the Chinese philosophy for choosing the healthy site and architecture. Some monk who happened to be a “Feng Shui” expert gave an advice before the beginning of the design and site selection. The monk made up the design code for the house. The code lists are as follows.
There is a huge rock at the north of the site. According to the monk, dining table must face the rock. The living room and the master bedroom must face the valley on the west. The angle has to be exact. These are the two major requests from the “Feng Shui” expert.
Korean traditions
The client wanted to have one master bedroom, one guest room, one study room, and a single reception room. The reception room and the study room have to be separated from the main house for the privacy. And the area between two houses is used as a deck with a covered roof. This resembles the Korean traditional outdoor living room called “Daechung”. The heating system of the master bedroom has to be Korean traditional floor heating system; “Red Clay Ondol”. The whole master bedroom is made of red clay
We did not have a lot of freedom to design the floor plan. Most of floor plans are already placed by the client. Our design freedom is only at the mass play. Therefore, we made two different houses. Two house masses are normal pitched roof shape. However, one house is extruded as a cantilever structure, while the other house is erected. That is why the pattern of the wood panel on the wall is 90 degree different between two mass. And the one side of the two stories house is finished with roof material; zinc panel. By using the slope of the ground, we located the storage rooms under the yard. We wanted to make the house more like a village rather than a sing house. Therefore we also located storage house and a garage building surrounding area.
In order to make the healthier environment for his wife, the client wanted to avoid using the concrete and the steel material for the house. The house is made of wood. We used the cypress for the main interior finish material. Because the husband believes the cypress is good for the patient. This house is result of the husband’s love for his wife.