Kim, Jong-Ryang's H-shaped Houses in 1930s in Seoul

1930년대 김종량의 H자형 한일절충식 도시주택

This stydy investigates H-shaped houses in 1930s and examines the characters and meanigs of Kim, Jong-Ryang's H-shaped houses as a new trial to urban Hanok of those days. He, who was concerned about the housing problem of Seoul, made an attempt to make various types of dwellings. Among them, this study focuses on Japanese-Korean Style H-shaped houses in Samcheong-dong. As the alternative housing type against other urban Hanok of Seoul in 1930s, the H-shaped houses of Kim, Jong Ryang had characters as follows : 1) H-shaped houses has two special characters. First, the whole space of a single house can be divided into a left region and a right region. Second, it can be divided to a front region and a rear region. In his H-shaped houses, the left/right division was expressed as folding of space-layers in parallel with urban streets. The front/rear division was used as classification of main-living space and sub-living space. 2) KJR's H-shaped Japanese-Korean Style houses were proved to be designed as urban housing against the extreme housing shortage of Seoul in 1930s. 3) His houses however were not accepted broadly as a urban house type because the construction cost of those was higher than an average and the element of Japanese style house was not adapted to Korea. Kim, Jong-Ryang's trial is valuable because it was the rare case of realization of many discourses as defects of existing house type. With more rigorous investigations on KJR's experiment in modern house type, we could understand the housing condition of Seoul in 1930s and modern urban houses more than before.