Customer Reviews

Seowon: The Architecture of Korea's Private Academies (Korean Culture Series #2)

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What's really fantastic about this book is that, even
though the subject matter of the book lies in the foreign past, the
tone of the book is extremely local and contemporary.
That was only possible because Prof. Lee cut the history in half
and kindly guided us to the founders of Seowon (medieval academic
institution in Korea) with a clear reasoning and scholarly fervor.

The founders of Seowon lived during an era when a new thought,
Neo Confucianism, was rising to take over the old order of Buddhism. In
the heart of that turmoil, the new elite class sought
architectural expressions that best reified the new world-view.

Readers will walk to the doorsteps of many schools of thought
in that period of time. Reading the book Chosun scholarship
and political-lineage will be understandable.
Readers will see the arc (both in time and quality)of the
new metaphysics and its physical applications.
Flipping thru pages, reader will gradually comprehend some
of the common elements of Korean architecture through examples
and see how these differ from Chinese & Japanese style.
(raw and buff carpentry for example..)

The ideal of Seowon was poverty (in a scholastic sense); yet, the
humility of expression brought the richness of nature.
Personally what I enjoyed most was imagining being
at the center of the courtyards of each Seowon.
Prof. Lee's explanation and illustrations show the breath-taking beauty
of landscape flowing into the built complex, as if the purpose of the
houses were to contain landscape.