Hanok Hotel, Hownstay

"A hanok hotel, read through mid-century design."

Hownstay is a hanok stay in Yangpyeong, reinterpreted through mid-century design. The project renovated an old hanok in Yangpyeong, Korea into a stay. Underbar handled the design, construction, and custom furniture. Every wall came down, leaving only the columns and the roof. Mid-century aesthetics and ways of living were grafted onto the hanok structure.

The house was close to a ruin at first sight. The structural frame, however, was intact. A hanok is a post-and-beam structure. Columns and the roof carry the load. Walls carry nothing. Every plane between columns can open, and the boundary between inside and outside stays thin. The courtyard and the rooms flow into each other.

Mid-century architecture went through a similar shift. In the masonry era, load-bearing walls meant high ceilings and hard boundaries. Reinforced concrete freed the walls, and design moved toward low horizontal spaces and full-height glazing that pulls the landscape indoors. Walls recede. Inside and outside connect.

This shared logic set the direction: a hanok stay read through a mid-century lens. One persona guided the decisions. A German designer who fell for hanok while traveling Korea. What would he keep, and what would he bring in, if he lived in this house. That question became the standard for filling the hanok frame with mid-century furniture, audio, and daily rituals.

Fixed planes were finished as full-height glazing. Stone walls, chestnut trees, the village, and the mountain ridgeline serve as design elements of the interior.

All furniture was designed and built in-house. The contrast of lines and planes formed by rafters and lime-plastered walls guided the work. Mid-century furniture speaks the same grammar of wooden frames and panels. Kitchen units and cabinets with timber edges and ivory panels repeat the order of the ceiling.

Vintage audio systems sit in the living room and the bedroom. Listening to good sound inside this space was part of the design scope.

The old storehouse, the only volume with its own entrance, became a Finnish sauna. The back wall facing the quiet rear garden opened into a window, with a sauna and a bathtub inside. A rare setup in Korea at the time. A few of the house’s original doors were reused, left as details that testify to the passage of time within the new space.

The courtyard and the rear garden extend into the interior. The hanok’s post-and-beam structure stays exposed while mid-century aesthetics and function coexist. Reading the structure of an old house and finding its contemporary use within. This is how Underbar approaches renovation projects.

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