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

To address the housing shortage in Korea, there has been significant increase in the construction of apartments for decades. As a result, apartments are currently the most common form of housing in Korea but their layout tends to be uniform in design. Fortunately, since the 2000s, this uniformity has been disrupted and a variety of housing unit plans have recently emerged. Unfortunately, however, most of the previous studies on apartments in Korea were conducted before the 2000s. This research, therefore, aims to identify and categorize the significant changes in residential unit layouts that have occurred since the 2000s. The scope of this analysis is limited to 85 m² unit plans developed in Seoul between 2000 and 2020. For the analysis, we utilized the space grammar methodology developed by Ju & Kim (2020). The findings were as follows: 21 plan types emerged, which can be categorized into 7 types based on their public space layouts; the types vary depending on the period. In particular, the arrangement of the major rooms has changed such that the living room has been moved away from the entrance, and the kitchen/dining room has been relocated to the front from the back. As a result, apartment floor pon, or living in public rental apartments were more likely to evaluate overall housing environment positively than rest of the respondents.