The language of architecture is a kind of tool which helps people to experience the environment not as the thing itself but as a meaningful one. It, gathered by place, constitutes 'genius loci', as the existential structures. It, in other words, gives a thing 'cognitive quality', and serve people to 'dwell' because 'a place is a gathering thing with concrete presence.' Our environment, only when it possesses the language, presents itself as a namable thing or an understood world. Such a meaningful identification is dwelling. The modern world is a complex melting-pot. It is 'complexities' and 'contradiction'. The language of architecture is never created, rather it is selected by needs of the time and the place. In this sense, architectural design means discovery and interpretation of the poetic order of architypal form and style, and the poetic order is a way for people to dwell in the humanistic sense. These reminds me of Martin Heidegger's statement : 'Architecture belongs to poetry, and its purpose is to help man to dwell.'

• 변태호(성균관대학교 건축공학과) | Byun Tae-Ho (Sung Kyun Kwan University)