Hermann Town House

There are distinctive differences in residential housing styles between Korea and Western countries. The housing types in these countries usually are divided into less than five storey townhouses or high-rise apartments in urban areas and detached houses in suburban areas, while high-rise multipurpose building complexes with a floor area ratio of 800 percent and apartments with floor area ratio between 300 percent~500 percent account for 70 percent of the entire housing types in Seoul City.

Housing demand in Seoul is limited due to the cost of land prices and sales prices in urban areas. Also, as most people who don’t need to live in Seoul move to other cities situated on the outskirts of Seoul, housing shortages in these cities have resulted in the development new towns.

What is interesting is that the population residing in Seoul and its metropolitan areas is about 49 percent of the entire population of Korea (2010 census survey, national statistics office). However, most construction companies uniformly build high-rise apartments in these areas in order to accommodate drastic housing demand in new towns.

Thus, this housing situation only makes the urban areas surrounding Seoul increase in size. As it is difficult to find affordable housing and land to be developed for residential housing unit in urban areas, people have recently begun to turn their eyes to townhouses which have a more natural environment in suburban areas with a well-established infrastructure. Therefore, the “Hermann Haus” can be viewed as collective residential housing with low density, rather than as detached houses or personal retreats.

Like suburban houses in Western countries which are developed as low-density housing units, compared with townhouses in urban areas, the “Hermann Haus” format is a low-density housing style with a floor area ratio of 100 percent. In addition, the continuity of sharing neighboring walls, reasonable planning of entire land areas and relatively spacious 205m2 (2207ft2) plot of land per household are other advantages of the Hermann Haus housing format.

Moreover, it is just 40 minutes away from Seoul and boasts modern compact housing units with a floor space of 85m2 (910ft2). The Hermann Haus is a rural collective housing type that features a community complex of continuously arranged households that minimized construction costs and offers personal front and back yards for each household. Thus, it can be said as a new form of residential housing unit that can replace uniform apartments with maximized density in this era of serious urban housing shortages.