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Da-On

guga urban architecture

written by
Cho Junggoo
photographed by
Park Youngchae
materials provided by
guga urban architecture
edited by
Lee Sungje
background

Friends decided to live together and found the site before commissioning the architect. Designing five houses, we wanted to design them to be in harmony with the landscape that blends with the nature. Da-On is located on the highest part of the terrain among other houses.

The Da-On is based on a small prototype called ¡®guga by guga¡¯. The prototype features a ¡®simple and functional envelope¡¯ of modern architecture, with a three-modular unit system composed of rooms, floors, and kitchens, like Dosan Seowon, a Confucian Academy in Andong. While other designs are still ongoing at the moment, it replaced the previous after the client found this design and asked to follow this scheme. Since then, a level variation was applied per room and floor following the levels of topography while integrating living rooms and kitchens and adding a foyer, a multi-purpose room, and a roofed deck. It became a small but big house with a spacious living room to greet neighbours.

Each room in the house offers a unique view and atmosphere. In the attic, a window is placed in the pediment to allow distant mountain view and shed light through the sky window to create a cosy space. The living room is surrounded by corridors and attics, meaning that inhabitants encounter the surrounding scenery without directly facing the rougher aspects of nature. In particular, the window that forms its boundary made of Korean paper, hemp and glass, which gently or subtly surround the space, allowing ¡®the soul and the landscape to meet naturally¡¯.​ 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

Architect

guga urban architecture (Cho Junggoo)

Design team

Yoneda Sachiko, Song Seonmi

Location

Geomun-ri, Jinbu-myeon, Pyeongchang-gun, Gangwon-d

Programme

single house

Site area

935m2

Building area

97.48m2

Gross floor area

97.48m2

Building scope

1F

Parking

1

Height

5.2m

Building to land ratio

12.44%

Floor area ratio

12.44%

Structure

heavy timber framing, light wood framing

Exterior finishing

wood siding, brick, stuc-o-flex

Interior finishing

water paint, Korean paper

Structural engineer

Doohang Structures & Consultants Co., Ltd

Mechanical engineer

JUNGIN Engineering Co. LTD

Electrical engineer

Jisung Consultant Co. LTD

Construction

Stuga Wood Construction

Design period

Dec. 2015 ¡ª May 2017

Construction period

July 2017 ¡ª Sep. 2018

Client

Kang Soonjoo

Landscape architect

urbangarden_ain


Cho Junggoo
Cho Junggoo was born and raised in Bogwang-dong, Seoul in 1966. He graduated from the Department of Architecture at Seoul National University. In 2000, he founded guga urban architecture and continued to explore design along the theme of a ¡®universal architecture that is close to our life¡¯. Over the course of 20 years of suyo-dapsa (Wednesday Site Visits), the architect has observed and recorded the lives of neighbourhoods and people in Seoul and continued to discover a housing of our time based on the various forms of life which encountered in his research.

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