• Journal of the Korean housing association
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.67-77
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to investigate the theoretical origins and characteristics of Korean Apartment that became a dominant housing type of Korea by comparing it with the ideas of Le Corbusier, Siedlung and Hilberseimer. Korean apartment is different from Corbusier's idea in that it has no vision for new community in modern society. Formal typology of apartment also differs from Corbusier's unite which embodied a new collective way of living in modern society. In that Korean apartment was introduced as a means to provide houses to urban worker and to solve the housing shortage, it was close to the idea of Siedlung. However, unlike Siedlung Korean apartment was based on urban ideology and not a social housing. In terms of it's repetitive form, Korean Apartment resembled Hilberseimer's proposal for capitalistic metropolis. However, it differs from Korean Apartment in that the latter has no utopian vision of new order So, while reflecting fragmented ideas of modern utopia, Korean apartment is architecture without utopia.