cheoma · the line where roof meets sky
Timber joinery without nails. Courtyards that breathe.
Hanok is an architecture studio in Cheongun-ri translating the carpentry of the Korean house — pine locked into pine, rooms gathered around an open madang — into certified passive houses that hold their warmth for days and their dignity for generations.
- houses completed since 2019
- 14
- median air changes per hour at 50 Pa
- 0.38
- of structural mass in timber
- 92%
madang · the courtyard
The courtyard is the first room
Every house we draw begins with the void at its centre. The madang — the packed-earth courtyard of the traditional Korean house — was never leftover space. It was the house's lung: the place where winter sun was gathered and thrown into the rooms, where summer air was pulled through open halls, where kimchi jars, weddings, and threshing all happened under the open sky.
A passive house is usually described in numbers — fifteen kilowatt-hours, point-six air changes, no thermal bridges. We accept every one of those numbers and then ask the older question: where does the light land in February, and which two doors do you open in July? When the courtyard is drawn first, the physics gets easier, not harder. The envelope closes tight around rooms that already know how to breathe. Every house in our project record began this way, and the method has not changed since the first frame.
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Gyeolgu · the joint
Beams lock by shape, not by fastener. Every member can be cut out, repaired, and slid back — a frame designed for its own second century.
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Tongpung · the through-breeze
Rooms face the madang so that opening two doors moves air across the whole plan. Summer cooling begins as geometry, not machinery.
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Ondol · the held warmth
The old floor stored a fire's heat for a day. Our slab and envelope store a winter afternoon's sun for three — the ondol logic, airtight.
daecheong · the open hall
Selected work
- Cheongun Passive House A three-bay pine frame around a ten-metre madang; the studio's first certified build, at 11.8 kWh/m²a.
- Two-Madang House A household of seven under one roofline, arranged as two courtyards — one loud, one quiet.
- Dumun Valley Annex A 1931 frame lifted, re-jointed, and wrapped in a new envelope without losing a single original beam.
jangbu · the tenon
How pine learns physics
chodae · an invitation
Stand in the model madang
Drawings say less than an afternoon. Our model house in Cheongun-ri keeps its doors open Tuesday to Saturday — come feel what 0.38 air changes and a courtyard breeze do to a room.