[Buddha-l] Korean monastic architecture

[Whitney Bodman]

The movie is Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring.

Info can be found at:
http://www.sonyclassics.com/spring/shell.html

Whit

Whitney S. Bodman
Ass't Prof. of World Religions
Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
100 E. 27th St.
Austin, TX  78705
512  404-4835
wbodman at austinseminary.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Alex Wilding [mailto:alex at chagchen.org] 
Sent: Sunday, September 04, 2005 4:43 AM
To: Buddhist discussion forum
Subject: [Buddha-l] Korean monastic architecture

My daughter asked me if I could find out whether what I describe is a
real
feature of the architecture one might find in a Korean monastery or
temple,
or whether it was just a cinematic metaphor.
She told me of a film (moderately well known, I believe) set in a Korean
temple (on some kind of island in a lake - sounds like something off a
chinoiserie plate!). In the temple is a central area with a Buddha
statue,
and there are a couple of rooms off. The curious feature is that
although
there are doors to the rooms, there are no walls. The protagonists go
from
room to room through the doors, but at a later stage go straight through
the
(non-existent) walls.
It is easy to understand this simply as a metaphor, but she wonders
whether
perhaps it is based on a real architectural style used in Korean
monasteries
and/or temples. Can anyone tell me?
Thanks in advance
AW