Abstract
Apartments have become the most popular type of residential building in Korea since the 1960s. The dwelling space should be designed to accomodate various life styles or changing needs of family members. This research is conducted to analyze flexible interior space types of apartments and to improve the architectural planning and design of apartments that can satisfy various needs of residents. In this study, apartments of 10 - 90 pyeongs built in the region of Seoul, between 1998 and 2007, are investigated in terms of the unit plan, the number of open sides, and a distribution of flexible apartment types for each year, Apartments with flexible space are classified into 10 different types, including a flexible type between bedrooms, a flexible type between a bedroom and the livingroom, and a flexible type between the dinning room and the livingroom. According to the composition of unit plans, apartments are also differentiated as a single-corridor type, a double-corridor type, a stairway type, a hall type, and a combination type. According to these classifications, the characteristics of desirable unit plans were analyzed. The results of the analysis showed that, as the unit size of apartments get bigger, the ratio of width/depth of the front side unit plan is increased. This result reflects a trend of high-rise apartments which have an increased number of front-side bays and a shorter depth for better penetration of daylight. In addition, a hall type is found to have a wider front side and shorter depth. According to open sides, a flexible type of the livingroom and the dinning room/kitchen (L-D.K) is found to be most common for the front/back open space, and the livingroom is usually placed on the front/side open space. To meet the changing needs of residents, more research should be conducted on flexible dwelling space.
