Limit houses by the number of bays (kan): a king’s son by his queen to sixty, other princes and princesses to fifty, officials of the second rank and above to forty, those of the third rank and below to thirty, and commoners to ten.
grand prince 60 kan · prince 50 · rank 2+ 40 · rank 3− 30 · commoner 10 · 1 kan = the square between four posts
The kan (the bay between two posts, and the room it frames) was the measure of a Korean house as the ken was of a Japanese one. The limits of 1431 were one of a series of sumptuary laws against extravagance; later ones also restricted the length of beams, the height of columns and the use of carved and painted brackets to royal and public buildings. Houses were counted in kan in every sale and tax record.
In the town the thatched house of a commoner has five bays by two, ten kan; the tiled L-, U- and closed houses of officials have about twenty, thirty and forty.
Build the bracket set (puzuo) of blocks (dou) and arms (gong) crossing at right angles, each tier projecting no more than 30 fen beyond the one below; a set of n projecting tiers is called an (n + 3)-puzuo, from four to eight.
projection per tier ≤ 30 fen · rise per tier = 21 fen · puzuo = tiers + 3
Give the hipped roof (wudian) to the highest halls, the hip-and-gable (xieshan) to the next, and the gabled roofs, overhanging (xuanshan) and flush (yingshan), to lesser buildings and houses; double the eaves for the very highest.
double wudian > double xieshan > wudian > xieshan > xuanshan > yingshan
Give a hall an odd number of bays across the front (three, five, seven, nine or eleven) so that the central axis passes through a bay and a doorway, never through a column.
Lay out the royal city as a square of nine li on each side, with three gates in each wall and, within, nine roads running north–south and nine east–west, each wide enough for nine chariots abreast.
side = 9 li · 3 gates × 4 sides · 9 jing + 9 wei · road width = 9 gui (tracks)
With the palace at the centre facing south, place the ancestral temple on its left (east) and the altar of soil and grain on its right (west); put the court in front and the market behind, each one fu (a hundred paces) square.
Find true north and south with a plumb-lined post and the shadows of sunrise and sunset, checked by the pole star; then turn the principal hall of every compound to face south.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The size of a house by its owner’s rank”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/sejong-house-limits. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.