Configurational Analysis of Contemporary Korean-Style Houses Regarding the Expression of Their Koreanity

This research focuses on how the 'Koreanity' inherent in many traditional Korean houses of the upper class is expressed in contemporary 'Korean-style' houses, and how aspects regarded as configurational characteristics of traditional houses are expressed in them. Three types of Korean house (traditional upper class, contemporary Korean-style and contemporary architect) are quantitatively analysed using the space syntax method to investigate of the spatial configuration and their syntactic properties. The research results show that the spatial configuration of traditional houses is more integrated than that of contemporary houses. Furthermore, contemporary Korean-style houses are similar to architect's houses in terms of their spatial configurations. The configurational analyses reveal that the way in which spatial configuration is expressed in contemporary Korean-style houses is significantly different from traditional Korean houses. This result is in direct contrast to the architects' claim that their houses maintain the configurational chracteristics of traditional Korean houses.