Cheongun House by Tectonics Lab in Seoul

The house on the slope of Seoul’s Bugaksan Mountain responds both to the historic feeling and to the “generic modernity” of the old city centre. The client – a professor emeritus – decided against the old, dilapidated house that once stood here and in favour of a new house for his plot of land. After the demolition, the client was given the remnants of the 50-year-old house, which had been built by his father: the wooden flooring, the window grates and the door panels.

Nonetheless, the new building was to retain a memory of the old one. The architects from Tectonics Lab have translated this wish into a nine-square grid, a traditional typology still found in the architecture of East Asia. The new house symbolizes an abstract, ideal space: its symmetrical arrangement is a significant precondition for the actual spatial structure. For an academic concerned with education and research, the symmetry of the house, which is also used as a research institute, represents harmony and clarity.