Houses, Tree Houses and Trees: A Bloggy Triptych

My next three posts will explore the relationship between a home and the land it inhabits. I will not go into extreme detail, but I will explore three areas that have interested me as of late. Part I is about housing in Korea. Part II will be about tree houses, while part III will delve into the world of pleaching--a previously unknown art form similar to tree grafting. These are vaguely related, but enough to make a written triptych with tree houses as the largest, main panel which the other two posts relate to.

Part I: Hanok vs. Apart-uh

(Hanok: A Traditional Korean Home)

The architecture and construction of new homes is fascinating to me. In Korea, it seems that there is a very small amount of traditional building happening across the construction spectrum. Tearing down and building up are common place here; however, what goes up is generally of the tall aparment building variety. The huge apartments are all owned and overseen by a few companies (Hyundai, Samsung and others), and they all look the same. Living in one of these apartments indicates that the family is of a higher class, whereas life in a Hanok is reserved for the country folk (all of my students!). These "apart-uh" are functional and hold large amounts of people, which is necessary in such a densely populated country, but they are so...boring.

(Apart-uh: Samsung Apartments, South Korea)

When seen from a mountain top in Seoul, or countless other cities, these high rise apartment buildings look like a spreading fungus-like growth (did they take a cue from one of their favorite mushrooms, the alba clamshell?). I remember one of my first ventures into Seoul almost a year and a half ago. The previous summer, I had done a short roadtrip with my friend and my cousin to Colorado, taking the "long" way through South Dakota. SoDak has a population of 800,000 souls. In Seoul, as our bus bumbled along passed these huge white apartment towers, I couldn't help but think that I could see (of course, I couldn't "see" the actual people...they were inside, or at work, or wherever) as many people in about twenty minutes on a bus as one could see in the whole state of South Dakota.

(A Rapid City, South Dakota Home)

South Dakota, by the way, is almost twice as big as South Korea, with 75% of South Korea's land covered with uninhabitable mountains and a population approaching fifty million. So, this makes sense...but really, the huge apartment complexes are just ugly.

(South Dakotans have also created this--huge white heads to

stare at the indigenous...Which isn't that much better than huge white

apartment buildings to stare down at a traditional way of living)