The building cultural assets from the Goryeo Dynasty are the oldest wooden structures existing in Korea. There are only ten of them left in North and South Korea. The scarcity has given them tremendous value and importance. Continuing conservation eff...
The building cultural assets from the Goryeo Dynasty are the oldest wooden structures existing in Korea. There are only ten of them left in North and South Korea. The scarcity has given them tremendous value and importance. Continuing conservation efforts have been made for those structures of huge importance in Goryeo and Chosun. During the Japanese rule when modern conservational measures began, they completely dismantled and repaired five of the six Goryeo building cultural assets remaining in South Korea.
For those structures whose main material is wood, it's inevitable to observe the wooden material go rotten as time goes by, which in turn calls for necessary changes to the current state according to the concerned policies and administrative measures. Changes to the current state of a structure are also inevitable to prolong the life of the structure as conservational acts are taken. It's critical to record the changes in an accurate and consistent manner and thus to maintain the legitimacy of the value of important building cultural assets.
This study set out to analyze the cases of conservational constructions for the national treasure-level traditional building cultural assets from Goryeo including the Buseoksa Muryangsujeon, Buseoksa Josadang, Sudeoksa Daewungjeon, and Gangneung Gaeksamun from a design and structure perspective. The results were expected to make a contribution to future conservational efforts. The research led to the following conclusions:
1. The problems and countermeasures of the conservational trend for Goryeo building cultural assets in modern times
1) Recognition and observance of the importance of construction guidelines
The field construction guidelines were not mandatory but recommendatory at a conservational construction site during the Japanese rule. They didn't leave a brand on the members newly replaced at the Gangneung Gaeksamun, which made it difficult to decide the time to replace each member in the recent conservational constructions.
2) The trend to emphasize the design characteristics
They put the design characteristics first when doing conservational constructions during the Japanese rule as they aimed at restoring the original shape at the time of the creation. The trend has found its way to today, which has raised serious problems as follows:
a. They focus on the restoration of the original shape and destroy the valuable remains from the Chosun period.
b. They emphasize the external design features and think little of the remains of traditional techniques.
c. They take bold measures to restore the roof stones and stylobates whose historical verification is impossible.
3) The need to arrange the construction techniques according to times
They didn't explore and reconstruct the traditional techniques when repairing the traditional structures from Goryeo during the Japanese rule. With confusions emerging between the traditional techniques and newly adopted ones, those in between were used without any distinction of the times.
4) The need to embrace coexistence of different styles
In Chosun, they applied the Chosun styles to the stylobate, axis, and roof stone in doing conservational constructions for the structures from Goryeo. In modern conservational constructions, they only kept the older styles and techniques and accordingly removed the relatively newer ones.
Those decisions were made to reflect the historical period of the structures more accurately and to increase their values by focusing on the target period. But their side effects were considerable with huge damage to the authenticity and completeness of the structures. And they took those conservational methods that were far from the principle of keeping the original shape. It's more desirable to embrace the coexistence of different styles, not to remove and hide them in structural aspects, to keep the original shape to the maximum degree, and approach them academically.
5) The need to reduce the load of the roof stone in constructions
Since the Japanese rule, they have focused on maintaining the design characteristics of a structure and enhancing its durability in repairing a traditional building structure. But the repair cycle of a roof stone has cut shorter than the past, which can be attributed to the following reasons:
a. The amount of filling earth and small sticks increased as they tried to make the roof curves more splendid. And the modern KS roof tiles weighed more.
b. The three-tier tiling method, which was adopted for waterproofing purposes, added more load to the roof.
In future conservational constructions, a focus should be placed not on reinforcement of the structural members but on prolonging the durability period by reducing the amount and weight of the members used for a roof stone.
a. The use of filling earth is a huge factor in reducing the total weight of a roof. It's a critical task to find materials to replace filling earth for longer life of a structure.
b. The problems with the use of KS roof tiles have been raised for years now. New roof tiles with better absorption rates and intensity should be developed.
2. Increasing confusion with maintaining the original design and style
- When examining the wooden structures from Goryeo, they placed enormous importance on their design aspects as part of the value evaluation criteria in the early stages, which tendency was reflected in actual repair constructions. They focused on minimizing the changes to the current design and on improving the durability and functionality.
- With the goal of maintaining the original design at the creation in repairing each part of a structure, they had three restoration approaches to follow:
a. Reconstructing the old design characteristics as they were
b. Reconstructing the old design characteristics that all disappeared based on their traces
c. Reconstructing the old design characteristics that all disappeared along with their traces based on the similar remains or estimations.
- When the Chosun styles had been added to the original Goryeo styles in one structure, they pursued the latter and removed the former altogether. But the problem is that they didn't conduct thorough investigation and research about the Chosun styles they were about to eliminate. Now it's impossible to reconstruct the measures from Chosun.
- Those who participated in a repair construction were usually experts on certain architecture fields with few experts on Dancheong and murals taking part in the process. Thus Dancheong and murals were excluded from the conservation scope, which led to the decrease of cultural value after repair.
- They didn't follow the rules of leaving marks on replaced design members. There are no marks found on some of the replaced members at Buseoksa Muryangsujeon, Buseoksa Josadang, Sudeoksa Daewungjeon, and Gangneung Gaeksamun, which adds more confusion to recent repair constructions.
3. Structural and technical diversification and confusion with traditional techniques
- There was little concern with the structural and technical aspects on the "Guidelines for Repair Constructions." No specific guidelines were made for those aspects, which added more confusion in succeeding and implementing the traditional techniques.
- In doing a repair construction, they were active in adopting the old and new repair technique to prolong the durability period of the structure. Therefore, it's inevitable to replace certain traditional techniques with new ones.
- Following the principle of "maximum utilization of old members," the damaged old members were repaired in the Chaeummok and Dongbariieum method. The maximum utilization of old members accomplished two goals:
a. Ultimate conservation of the styles by recycling the old members
b. Saving the construction costs allocated to material purchase and cutting down the time to trim timber
- In a repair construction during the Japanese rule, they made active use of the traditional Korean roof tiles and thus contributed to the transmission of the traditional roof tiling technique using cultural assets.