• Journal of architectural history
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.27-44
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• 2009

In Korea, the direction of houses are typically determined by considering the directional orientation and shape of the mountain range rather than ignoring the geographical feature of the mountain range. Traditional villages of Korea are known to have very particular ways of adopting the geomantic surroundings of natural environment. This is very true especially have a high mountain in the back and a lower mountain in front. At the same time, most of the houses tend to prefer south as a man direction so that they can receive more sun light. However, if the mountain range faces north, it will not be easy to determine the directional orientation of houses. This paper, therefore, tries to identify how the houses of villages facing north, direst the orientation. This, the northern village, solves the problem by facing all direction rather than one major direction. The houses of the villages facing north, tend to revise the direction by changing the back mountain(주산) or front mountain(인산) that helps them change the direction towards he range of eastern or western direction. As a result, the houses tend to the direction towards east and wes compared to north and south. The directional orientation of houses was clearly distributed or concentrated by depending of the shape and directional orientation of the mountain range. This kind of research let us know the relationship between the natural north direction, the direction of geomantic surrounding, and the direction of houses in traditional Korean villages.