Journal of the Korean Housing Association ISSN:2234-3571(Print) 2234-2257(Online) 한국주거학회논문집

Current criticism regarding the “uniformity” of Korean apartments has shown not only tendencies of emotional and unscholarly criticism, but also lack of academic discourse. They tend to stay at the common-sense level and be quite subjective without supporting facts. This research began with questioning the phenomenon of seeing Korean apartments as an object of negative criticism. The research questions for this study are: 1. Of the living space of so-called apartment houses, what elements should be called uniform?; 2. How should the implications of the findings be interpreted? In this context, this study aims to reinterpret criticisms on the uniformity of apartments from a new point of view. First, literature review is done to examine characteristics of Korean apartments in the social-cultural, economic, and physical contexts. Next, existing non-academic, abstract criticisms are classified into three trends, to show that the way of understanding architectural spaces by those criticisms are limited and weighted towards visual perceptions focused only on the shape of architectural structures. Finally, it is argued that the viewpoints of space and residents’ experience should be treated as important for the reinterpretation of criticisms on the uniformity. This is validated through presenting relevant cases such as changes of space uses, diversified lifestyles being accepted, and the expansion of living space.