Handbuilt

Daeheung Pavilion (대흥루, 大興樓) was not built on this site. It was constructed in a classroom 400 kilometers away and later relocated here. House Building School in Gangwon Province In 2019, I participated in a hwangto (황토, earthen construction) house-building program in Wonju, Gangwon Province, alongside 15 other participants. The idea was simple: to learn by building a house firsthand. A full-sized house was too large to be built as a sample in a classroom. So, the group built a pavilion instead — a traditional Korean open-sided structure featuring a roof in the style of a complete house. With its roof, pillars, and floor, it provided a full structural framework on a manageable scale. ...

On Daeheung Farm, there is a spring that does not dry in winter. It was always there — a small ongdalsaem (옹달샘), a pool fed from underground. I enclosed it and named it Daeheung Spring (대흥샘). How It Was Built No magic, no machinery doing the fine work. Just time and mortar. A hired excavator traced the underground source and opened the ground around it. I ordered a marble coping — the rim that edges the basin — from a stone mason. Then I mixed and applied roughly 100 bags of 40 kg mortar by hand to seal the floor and walls of the basin. That is four tonnes of mortar, mixed and trowelled over several months. ...