Located near the mountains around Yanggu, in South Korea, Forest’s Quintet is a small residential ‘settlement’ shaped and structured by the owners’ dual desires to enjoy exclusive contact with nature and feel part of a community imbued with the same values. The complex was conceived to offer an alternative to urban dwelling and seems almost to embody and interpret various aspects and ideas that Frank Lloyd Wright used for his Broadacre City. As the antithesis of city living, Broadacre City offered a vision of society and a city built around single-family homes immersed in nature and surrounded by land (one acre per family) on which to grow one’s own produce. Forest’s Quintet was born of the dual need for contact with both nature and the community. This is the underlying idea for these five individual houses that combine to form an ideal refuge for their inhabitants. Hyunho Lee and James Wei Ke - Chiasmus Partners - were approached by this group of five families and close friends to develop a secluded refuge away from the rest of the world. The desire to be part of a group while also indulging one’s personal needs was the guiding principle behind the programme, and determines how each house fits into the context and the choice of materials, volumes and internal organisation. The five houses are in a semi-circle around a tree-filled central area bordered by the driveway to each house. The shared garden nestling between the five homes is shaded by tall pine trees that nonetheless allow open views and relations between the inhabitants of Forest’s Quintet. Above the villas, thick mountain forest protects and guards the small settlement. The architectural conception and arrangement draws from Eastern pavilions, especially Korean gardens. Envisaged as structures surrounded by nature, they are laid out to ensure each house has different views despite the proximity and to avoid any sense of crowding. No fences stand between the houses themselves or their surrounds. Only...
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