The Earth House, completed by BCHO Architects, is a home buried in the ground in Seoul, South Korea. The house is lined in concrete and has two courtyards that connect all of the rooms together. Wood from a pine tree on site was embedded into the concrete court yard walls. The earth used for the walls is from the site excavation.
The house was designed to focus on the primal relationship between nature and humans. Each room opens to the court yard, and the court yard then opens to the sky. The house has a small kitchen, a study, two resting rooms, a bathroom with a wooden tub and toilet, and a wash room. Adjacent rooms can be joined to create a larger room. The house doors are small, and so entering the house requires making your body into a smaller shape. Geothermal tubes and passive cooling are buried in the earth around the building to keep the temperature cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Photographs are by Wooseop Hwang.
