Types of Houses

ONDOL is a traditional house in Korea. The winter is always very cold so the Korean people build two-floored houses like this. You can see the first floor of the house but the second floor is under the ground. There is a kitchen and a heating system on the first floor. It is small because they don’t like the cold weather. Then there’s a living room and there are bedrooms on the second floor. The heat goes from the kitchen to the second floor so downstairs is hotter.

GEL is a nomad house in Mongolia. Nomads are people who don’t live in one place but they move their houses when the seasons change. They cover their houses with a big cloth to protect themselves from cold weather. They don’t have any windows. Nomads live with their big domestic animals. When these animals finish eating all the grass, they carry their houses to another place. There is only one room in the gel so they sit, sleep and eat in the same room.

CAPPADOCIA HOUSES are in Göreme Valley, Turkey. They are very old rocky houses in a volcanic area. Mother nature formed the houses then, the wind and the rain shaped them. Also people carved out some parts to make windows and doors. They are very cool to live in during hot summers. Today, people use most of them as restaurants or boutique hotels. These houses are on the list of the World Heritage site because of their rich history and every year thousands of tourists visit them.

NDBELE TRIBE HOUSES are in South Africa and you can easily spot these houses because the Ndebele women paint the doors with lots of colourful, geometrical patterns. Every village has a different pattern so when people look at the doors they can understand which village it belongs to.