This research aims to investigate Park Kilyong’s architectural theory and critique of Gyeongseong (Seoul) buildings, expressed in his ‘Overview of Modern Buildings in Gyeongseong’ and ‘Critique of Gyeongseong Buildings’ (Samcheolli, Sept. and Oct. 1935); and ‘Architectural Form of the 100% Function’ and ‘The Modern and Architecture (1)-(4)’ (Dong-A Daily, 28 Jul. to 1 Aug. 1936). As a result, it is confirmed that Park had the functionalist theory of modern architecture, which suggests that Korean architects of the Japanese colonial period were accommodating the contemporary trend of world architecture. However, Park shows his fundamental limitations in the fact that the main content of his articles was a verbatim translation of two Japanese references (Kurata, 1927; Ishihara, 1929) without proper indications. Despite the limitations, his texts are still meaningful since he formed his own architectural theory on the basis of what he translated; and indeed his critique of Gyeongseong buildings, however simple, was based on the theory. This research makes a critical analysis of Park’s functionalist theory from both the 1930s’ and present points of view and compares his commentaries on Gyeongseong architecture with those by Ko Yu-seop (1932) and Hong Yunsick (1937), illustrating how Korea perceived architecture and modernism in 1930s.

This paper discusses Leon Battista Alberti’s vision of the paradigmatic city. In his De re aedificatoria, Alberti proposes how the architecture of both individual buildings and cities should be ordered and embellished. Borrowing ideas from the ancient writers on one hand, and reflecting on actual urban reality on the other, Alberti proposes an ideal city where the sacred and the secular come together in hierarchical harmony, beautified under the principle of ornament. In Book VIII, dealing with secular public works of architecture, he writes about the composition of a new humanist city that transcends actual reality. Ornament, a central idea of his aesthetics, supports his conception of the paradigmatic city.

Colin Rowe was an important historian, theorist and critic in Modern architecture. His significance in Modern architectural history lies in not only historiography which has changed our view of Modernism but deep theoretical involvement in practice. This study is a critical review and analysis on his formalist approach in Architecture. With a view that his position of formalist has indispensible relationship with liberalism from K. Popper's critical rationalism, this study try to show how his philosophical background has an influence upon his way of seeing architecture, history, form, urbanism, and meaning, etc. And this study also try to explain why the principle of architecture as an autonomous discipline which is the main point of view in Rowe's criticism has been so successful and influential. This study also explain what is the possibility and limitation of Rowe's formalist approach and way of reading buildings. His intelligent way of formal analysis can give us new understandings of how the form generates and the process of design goes on. Furthermore it guide us a new horizon of architecture as a language game. Since his early writings showed both side of formalist approach in architecture and it didn't changed a lot. We can understand his 'Collage City' was a his final answer to his formalist way of making architecture and urbanism. we can estemate it as a utopia without utopianism and an ideology without ideological color.