DRAWING WORKS Carves a Concrete Surf Retreat into a Korean Hillside Near the East Sea

Yangyang-gun sits between Mount Seoraksan and the East Sea, a stretch of South Korea's eastern coast that has quietly become the country's surf capital. Along Jukdo Beach, a two-kilometer ribbon of white sand flanked by dense forest, the landscape oscillates between surf shops, cafes, and the wild terrain of the mountains. It is precisely the kind of place where a second home needs to earn its place, working with the salt air and the steep topography rather than against them.

Surf House, designed by Seoul-based DRAWING WORKS and completed in 2022, is a 93-square-meter guest house and occasional retreat for a couple who wanted minimal functionality and maximum connection to this coastal landscape. What makes the project worth studying is not its size but its restraint: a two-story reinforced concrete volume on a site that could have supported four stories, wrapped in a textured skin that borrows its rhythm from the surrounding trees and ocean waves, organized around a circular courtyard that pulls sky and light deep into the plan.

A Concrete Skin That Reads Like Landscape

The most immediately legible move here is the exterior cladding. DRAWING WORKS used civil construction molds to press 20-millimeter triangular-section dents into the concrete surface, running vertically across every facade. At a distance, the pattern reads as the dense trunks of the forest behind the building. Up close, it suggests the parallel lines of incoming swells. The effect shifts depending on the light: sharp and graphic in midday sun, soft and almost textile-like at dusk.

The choice of exposed concrete is not purely aesthetic. Yangyang's proximity to the ocean means constant salt exposure, and the architects selected concrete, stone, and aluminum specifically for their resistance to corrosion. Maintenance is low, and the material will weather into its surroundings over time rather than degrading. It is a smart, unglamorous decision that lets the texture do the expressive work while the structure does its job quietly.

Massing Against the Hillside

The site is bounded by mountains on three sides, with a road to the east blocking any direct view of the sea. Rather than fighting this constraint, the building stacks two compact volumes and steps them into the slope, keeping the overall profile low enough to defer to the forested hillside. The building coverage ratio lands at just under 18 percent, well within the 20 percent limit imposed by the area's natural green zone designation, and the two-story height feels deliberate rather than forced.

From the gravel drive, Surf House presents itself as a series of interlocking concrete blocks, punched sparingly with narrow windows and a recessed entry. The rear elevation is even more restrained, a near-blank wall that shields the interior from the road and the slope. The decision to build only two stories when four were permitted signals the architects' priorities: the house is not about volume but about the quality of the space it encloses.

The Circular Courtyard as Spatial Engine

The organizing gesture of Surf House is a circular courtyard that punctures the building vertically, open to the sky and visible from both floors. At ground level, it is a gravel-floored room lit by a perfect oculus overhead, a place to pause between entering and inhabiting. From the first floor, a curved metal railing traces the edge of the void, letting residents look down into the patio below while taking in a controlled slice of sky above.

This device solves several problems at once. It delivers natural light to the center of a compact plan that might otherwise feel dark. It creates visual continuity between the two levels without relying on an open staircase. And it establishes a third kind of space, neither fully interior nor fully exterior, that mediates between the private rooms and the outdoor lots. The wooden ladders propped against the courtyard walls add a pleasantly rough, almost nautical character, reinforcing the surf camp ethos without being literal about it.

Living Between Inside and Out

The program is deliberately sparse. The ground floor holds a kitchen and a guest sleeping area, with the kitchen positioned outside the main volume as a freestanding element meant to encourage interaction with the landscape. The first floor belongs to the couple: a bedroom, a bathroom, and a terrace that finally provides the ocean view the ground level cannot. Three outdoor lots, the entrance patio, the circular courtyard, and an inner garden, distribute open-air space throughout the plan so that every room has an immediate relationship with the outside.

The rooftop terrace, with its circular skylight opening and minimal concrete paving, acts as a third living room, one defined entirely by exposure. The curved railing and sliding glass doors on the upper level keep the transition between enclosed and open as seamless as possible. For a house used only occasionally, this layering of threshold spaces is generous. It means every visit feels like an unfolding sequence rather than a simple arrival.

Interior Detail and Material Restraint

Inside, the palette stays tight: superfine paint on walls, porcelain tile on floors, timber for the bed frame and handrails. The rope-wrapped handrails are a nice touch, tactile and slightly unexpected, referencing maritime rigging without descending into coastal kitsch. The bedroom's full-height window frames a stone retaining wall rather than a panoramic vista, a quiet decision that keeps the interior focused and grounded.

The curved balcony overlooking the gravel courtyard is one of the project's strongest moments from the inside. The white metal railing arcs against the ribbed concrete beyond, compressing the visual field into a composition of geometry and texture that shifts with every angle. It is the kind of detail that only works when the material vocabulary is limited enough for each element to register clearly.

Night Presence

After dark, the ribbed concrete surface transforms. Long-exposure photographs reveal the building as an almost monolithic form against the star-streaked sky, its vertical lines gaining depth and shadow that the daytime views flatten. The illuminated entrance at dusk glows warmly against the wooded hillside, a clear signal of habitation in an otherwise wild setting. The corrugated metal facade of an adjacent volume catches different light, adding textural variety to the street elevation and suggesting that the project is a small compound rather than a single object.

Plans and Drawings

The site plan reveals how tightly the building footprint is held within its 432-square-meter lot, with perimeter planting softening the edges and the circular courtyard reading as a geometric counterpoint to the rectangular volumes. The floor plans show a split-level organization on the first floor, with the staircase threading between the courtyard void and the sleeping quarters above. Five section drawings illustrate the relationship between the two-story volume and its sloping site, confirming how the architects used the grade change to tuck services below and lift the terrace above the tree line.

The elevation drawings are particularly instructive. Each facade reads differently depending on orientation: the street-facing side is punctuated by a single door and framed by trees, while the stepped massing on the rear elevation reveals the full sectional logic of the stacked volumes. The vertical cladding pattern is represented consistently across all four elevations, underscoring the architects' intention for the texture to unify what is, in plan, a complex aggregation of indoor and outdoor spaces.

Why This Project Matters

Surf House is a useful corrective to the notion that a second home on the coast needs to be transparent, expansive, or showy. DRAWING WORKS chose concrete over glass, enclosure over exposure, and restraint over spectacle. The result is a building that protects its inhabitants from salt and wind while still delivering the light, air, and connection to landscape that make a coastal retreat worth visiting. The circular courtyard is the key move, giving a 93-square-meter house a spatial generosity that its footprint does not promise.

More broadly, the project demonstrates how material specificity can carry architectural meaning without relying on form alone. The ribbed concrete is simultaneously structural, expressive, and practical, a single decision that resolves durability, identity, and context in one gesture. In a region increasingly defined by the casual, ephemeral culture of surf tourism, Surf House argues convincingly for permanence.

Surf House by DRAWING WORKS, Yangyang-gun, South Korea. 93 m², completed 2022. Photography by Yoon, Joonhwan.

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