Nº 016 Coming
ondol 온돌
A Korean floor warmed by the smoke of the kitchen fire.
Traditional Korean underfloor heating (gudeul) in which hot smoke from a low kitchen firebox travels through horizontal stone flues beneath the room before rising out of a chimney.
The film, in words
In a traditional Korean house, cooking dinner in the kitchen heats the bedroom next door.
It's called ondol, meaning warm stone: flat stone slabs laid over horizontal smoke channels.
The firebox, called agungi, sits low in the kitchen, so hot smoke naturally drafts under the raised room floor.
Thick stones over the fire store heat for hours, while mud plaster seals every joint to keep smoke out of the room.
Used in Korea for over two thousand years, it shaped a culture of sitting, eating, and sleeping close to the warm floor.
Its cousins: the Roman hypocaust, the Chinese kang bed-stove, and the Spanish gloria.
Ondol. A Korean floor warmed by the smoke of the kitchen fire.
Cousins
Also a cousin in: hypocaust