The history of modern apartments began in 1962 in South Korea. Since then, the number of apartment units constructed every year has been increasing. According to the 2005 Population and Housing Census, the proportion of apartment units in the total housing units approached 53%. Apartments became the major housing type in South Korea. Such changes had a great influence on the changes in residential culture and the life styles of the population. There have been many studies on qualitatively analyzing the changes of apartment unit types and the influence on residential culture. However, there has been little study on a quantitative analysis of the changes. In order to examine the reflection of the changes in apartment unit types on the residential culture, we quantitatively analyzed apartment space configurations. In this analysis, we limited the analysis target to the apartment units with a net usable space of 85m 2. They are called ‘National Housing Type’ or ‘People’s Housing Type’ by the Housing Construction Promotion Act. Since apartment units with a net usable space of 85m2 are so small that they do not give architects many choices for design .Architects have to choose a design option that may satisfy most of potential residents of the time. In this process, A-Space, an analysis software program, was developed by Yonsei University in Seoul Korea. A-Space can analyze the characteristics of individual units and the similarity between the flat units in addition to the the integration analysis in Space Syntax. We expect that, by analyzing the representative unit types of Korean apartments, we can get a better understanding on the characteristics of Korea apartment housing, the impact of culture on apartment space configurations, and cross-cultural links between Korean apartment units and other types of housing in other countries. Copyright © 2010 IAHS.
