Materials

We keep the palette short on purpose. Every material below has a documented life beyond eighty years, can be repaired by trades that still exist, and returns to soil or kiln when the house finally lets it go. Nothing in this library needs an apology in 2100. To see the palette assembled, walk through the built work — or better, visit the model house and put a hand on it.

Geumgang pine

The structural species for every frame we cut: slow-grown red pine from high, cold ridges, dense in the ring and honest under a chisel. We buy standing trees, mill them ourselves, and air-dry the members for two years under cover — the schedule is the schedule, and clients are told on day one. Pine cut this way moves less over a century than most engineered timber moves in a decade.

Hanji

Mulberry-bark paper, the hanok's original climate membrane. Traditional changhoji door paper diffuses light and passes vapour; we use it where it always lived — on lattice doors and interior screens — and we specify a modern hanji-faced airtight board for the envelope's sealing layer. The paper face takes tape, plaster, and repair without the brittleness of foil membranes, and it lets the wall assembly dry inward when summer drives the vapour the other way.

Giwa

The grey clay roof tile whose sagging ridge and upswept eave give the hanok its silhouette. Fired giwa lasts a century and a half; on retrofit work we relay the original tiles over new battens and count the breakage in single digits. On new builds the tile's mass is put to work — it tempers the roof's summer gain and shelters a deep, ventilated eave that shades the glazing precisely from May to September.

Hwangto and lime

Interior surfaces are finished in hwangto — ochre earthen plaster — over reed lath, with lime plaster in the wet rooms. Both are vapour-open, gently alkaline, and endlessly patchable; a wall scarred by a decade of children is a morning's work to make new. We have never installed a painted plasterboard wall and intend to keep the record.

Wood fibre and glass

The two modern guests. Wood-fibre batts and boards insulate every assembly — chosen over foams for vapour behaviour and over mineral wool for the carpenters' lungs. Glazing is triple, timber-framed, and placed by the shadow study rather than by symmetry. Where a view earns a big pane, the eave above it is doing calculated work.