In this paper, some popular intensity measures of earthquakes including magnitude, MMI, and PGA as well as their empirical relationships are briefly reviewed since they have been widely used without prudence by mass media, the public, and even the government when asking or expressing the seismic capacity of buildings. The basic concept of current seismic design is also presented in order to facilitate relevant discussions. It is emphasized that expressing the building seismic capacity simplistically in terms of seismological quantities or terminologies like magnitude and MMI is inherently irrational, may be misleading the stakeholders, and should be avoided. Alternative expressions, more rational and consistent with current seismic design philosophy and practice, are recommended.

Secure operation of hospitals during and right after earthquake is essential. Past lessons from earthquake damages have shown that most of the injured and the death occurred within 30 minutes after earthquake and the portion of nonstructural damage has become significant. However, hospital buildings in Korea have not prepared fully to address such rising issues. This paper is to study what type of damage patterns are related to hospital buildings and how to develop a preparedness plan to keep hospitals operational at all earthquakes if possible. This paper first reviews on past earthquake damages reported as critical to hospital buildings while classifying them into four groups: (1) structural element; (2) architectural-nostructural element; (3) medical equipments and contents; and (4) utility facility. Upon such classification, some detailed concerns can be specified under each group explicitly. Then a hierarchy for hospital building is also developed for the classified groups, which enables us to identify required things for the enhancement of seismic performance of hospital building that consists of heterogeneous elements. To upgrade the level of seismic performance for existing hospital buildings, the concept of performance-based approach can be adopted to address the heterogeneous problems in a systematic and stepwise manner. Finally a conceptual framework for the seismic risk assessment for hospital building is proposed toward the seismic enhancement of hospital buildings using performance-based approach.

For earthquake loss estimation of building structures in Gangnam-Gu district in Seoul, three scenario earthquakes were selected by comparison of the response spectra of these scenario earthquakes with the design spectrum in Korean Building Code (KBC 2009), and then direct losses of the building structures in the Gangnam-Gu district under each scenario earthquake are estimated. The following conclusions are drawn from the results of damage and loss in the second scenario earthquake, which has a magnitude = 6.5 and epicentral distance =15 km: (1) The ratio of building stocks undergoing the extensive and complete damage level is 40.0% of the total. (2) The amount of direct economic losses appears approximately 19 trillion won, which is 1.2% of the national GDP of Korea. (3) About 25% of high-rise (over 10-story) RC building wall structures, were inflicted with the damage exceeding moderate level, when compared to 60% of low-rise building structures. (4) From the economical view point, the main loss, approximately 50%, was caused by the damage in the high-rise RC wall building structures.

The Korean architect Chung Guyon(1945∼2011) is the translator of the Korean edition of Gourna: A Tale of Two Villages(1969) written by the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy(1900∼89). This fact, along with the facts that Chung changed the topic of his graduation thesis(1983) for UPA no.6 in Paris and that he became a supporter of earth architecture after he returned to Korea in 1986, confirms that Chung was strongly influenced by Fathy’s architecture in Gourna project. Therefore, the present paper aims at extracting didactic characteristics of Fathy’s architecture from the book and comparing them with those of Chung’s architecture. The categories of the characteristics extracted from the book (or his architectural activities in the Gourna project) are: clay/earth architecture; communicative and cooperative architecture; and critical stance towards society, and these are commonly found in Chung’s architecture, too, not without differences from Fathy’s owing to the gap between the two architects’ contexts. Reviewing these characteristics, this paper argues that Fathy and Chung tried to improve society in each context, working as both architect and social activist.