HANNAMDONG RESIDENCE GARDEN 1, Seoul, 1993

 

 

Scope

Garden Design and Construction Supervision

 

Team

Architecture: Hak Sik Son, AIA

 

In East Asia, household '家庭' means house and garden. The term for garden in turn means court '庭' and fenced-in cultivated garden '園'. In this garden, Oikos sought first to complete the architecture by anchoring it to the land, and second, to provide an unmistakable refined and contemporary Koreanness to this seemingly Western building.

 

Oikos focused on experience design and place making. Experience not only through movement into different places, gardens in a garden, but also through four seasons and participatory gardening, where the garden becomes a healing as well as a creative experience. We designed the special experience of the garden seen from inside of the house, and recycled leftover building materials and formal language of the architecture. The garden core element is the main empty space, 'Madang', which appears empty and yet full, calming and reflective, employing bare ground, a fitting symbol of frugality and Buddhist philosophy of Mu '無'. A stroll garden consisting of several seasonal sub-gardens wraps around the 'Madang' and house.

 

Publication

Garden Making II: Korean Contemporary Garden as Art , in: Environment and Landscape Architecture 1998/2, pp 30-37 (Korean)

 

10 Oikos Projects, In: Landscape Architecture in Korea, China Architecture and Engineering Publishers, Beijing, 2003, (Chinese)

 

Seoul Residence Gardens I, II, III, IV, In: Contemporary Korean Gardens, 2002, pp 12-73, Editor & Publisher: Environment and Landscape (Korean)