- Overview
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It is an architectural pilgrimage that explores the values of traditional Korean villages from the perspective of an architect.
- Book Intro
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The 'traditional village' referring to a historical village which was created in the pre-modern era and where people have lived until today, is a space of old wisdom of Korean ancestors who lived in harmony with nature. Among them, Hahoe Village and Yangdong Village were listed in the UNESCO World Heritage List in August 2010. Then, what are truly the values of traditional Korean villages that shine across history? At what and how should we look in this space of old wisdom?
This book is an architectural pilgrimage that explores the values of traditional Korean villages from the perspective of an architect. Han Pilwon, an architectural scholar who has been studying traditional villages for 26 years since his graduate school years in 1985, macroscopically looks at the spatial arrangement of 'village' that is a huge collective space and thereby illuminates the old architectural wisdom of ancestors that was captured in ‘traditional villages.’
The author presents the traditional village theory as a universal theory that has transformed an architectural paradigm through undertaking an escape from the yardstick of the existing Western architectural theory and finding the philosophy and principles implied in the traditional Korean villages. The author visited the 12 representative traditional villages of Korea and disclosed the logic and order, and the values hidden in the traditional Korean villages from the four viewpoints of ‘Ideology, culture, society and environment’ that are very comprehensive and universal.
- About the Author
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Han Pilwon
Han Pilwon is an architecture professor at Hannam University. He has been conducting research on traditional houses and villages, and historic cities since he was in graduate school in the mid-1980s. In 1985, he began studying traditional Korean villages and has expanded his research to traditional villages and historic cities of East Asian countries since 1995. Han also has been conducting a field study of historic Korean cities since 2006. He pays attention to discovering regional cultural assets and interpreting them from a modern perspective. He carries out practical works to plan and design a new space suitable for local cultures and environments together with ATA, a research community, based on the empirical study of traditional space.
