초록
"Home-vendors," or private homebuilders in Korea, have provided a significant portion of urban housing stock in Korea, especially for affordable multi-family and multi-unit housing markets. Despite their ubiquity, scholars and researchers have mostly ignored or mocked the home-vendors and their buildings, dismissing them as unworthy of serious study. Trapped between the professional and the vernacular domains of architecture, home-venders, nevertheless, have significantly transformed urban fabrics of Korea, and require an unbiased survey of their business models and design methods, both as entrepreneurs and designers. This research, therefore, aims 1) to define and categorize homebuilders based on business models, and 2) to analyze their business models vis-a-vis architectural design methods. Most of the data and images are collected through field-survey, and in-depth interviews, as only limited literature on the subject has been published. The conclusions drawn from these surveys and analyses highlight economic advantages of their flexible and adaptable business models, which benefit the buyers as well as vendors, and their socioeconomic contribution in dealing with housing shortages for the low-income population. Over time, their architectural tendencies have matured significantly, adding to our urban fabric another meaningful layer for serious contemplation.