A Study on the Shamanistic House Sprits and Spatial Organization of Korean Traditional Houses

한국전통주거(韓國傳統住居)에 나타난 가택신앙(家宅信仰)과 공간구성(空間構成)에 관한 연구(硏究)

Living spaces are the results of social environment and also the reflection of the viewpoints by their residents toward human culture and society. Therefore, in studying living spaces, the true essence of the spaces could be easily distorted when cultural and symbolic motives and values are disregarded and only their apparent characteristics are looked into. Hence, it's necessary to simultaneously understand both physical dwelling spaces from architecture's view points and social ideas, simultaneously, of people who form and interact with the spaces. Hence, this paper tries to study housing religion which is one of shamanistic religions which, in turn, have been the fundamental element of ancient religions and came into existence on the basis of dwelling spaces. This study presumes that house religion may have been permeated with its creators' ideas about living and those ideas could be one of those factors which plays a role in organizing of dwelling spaces. As such, with these prior analyses, this thesis attempts to understand the meaning of various dwelling spaces via the characteristics and functionalities of various house spirits which are mentioned in a local house religion and also will find out spatial harmony of Korean traditional living spaces by way of corelations among living spaces, people, and personalized house spirits. Almost all traditional Korean houses have assigned a house spirit to their individual dwelling space. This means a traditional house was considered as a scared space in a secular world called human society and the space was actually intended to protect sacredness of dwelling places from earthliness outside. So when the hierarchy of house spirits in housing religion is projected to a Korean traditional house, it can be shown that a dwelling house as a building was personified to a respectable human status. In other words, it can be concluded that each space was synonymous with a dwelling place for each house spirit and was considered a sacred godly place. In a nutshell, not only each space in a Korean traditional house was a physical and functional space, but also it formed a scared spatial place along with the concept of house spirits intending to ward off disasters and enjoy a comfortable life through those religious symbols and meanings. Housing shamanistic religion which has long been existing with residents and their lives is seeped with the viewpoints of the residents toward life, and hence understanding the meanings and organization of Korean traditional housing can reveal commonly practiced principles of spatial organization of the traditional houses. Therefore an analysis of Korean traditional housing on the basis of humanistic social ideas will help learn Korea's traditional houses which need to be understood in various methods.