The tasks of writing history is to reconstruct the past in order to understand the present condition and to envision the future. Modern architectural histories in the west have assumed this role, from Winckelmann to Giedion. Likewise, history of Korean modern architecture has to serve this purpose. However, existing histories of Korean modern architecture simply list up stylistic changes from western eclectic architecture to modernism without any historical narratives explaining the transition from Korean traditional architecture to modern architecture. History of Korean modern architecture has simply been understood as a unilateral process of transplantation of western architecture into Korea. This paper points out two major problems underlying this kind of historiography of Korean modern architecture. The one is formalistic approach which sees history of modern architecture mainly as a process of formal and stylistic changes. The other is humanistic approach which sees modern architects as agents of history. This paper argues that this kind of history writings has limitations since modernity of Korean architecture is fundamentally different from that of the west. and that specific tasks that Korean modern architectural history has to address are then two folds;(re)connecting the past architectural tradition to the present and forming self-identity of Korean architecture.

This study aims to examine the brief statement about the historiography of architecture by the French philosopher Michel Foucault and the possibility of a historical description according to his method. His historiographic proposition, “the history of architecture back in (the) general history of techne,” is a novel idea not only for his contemporaries but also for us. To grasp the meaning of Foucault’s proposition, we begin by considering his position with regard to architecture or architectural space in certain discussions till then. We then compare his standpoint on historical recognition with other viewpoints about historical narratives that can be found in books written since 1930. Finally, we interpret the concept of “techne” in the sense of “relation,” whose objectivation is for him his concern on architecture and examine possible aspects and their limits.

This study is on historiography of Modern Architecture since its beginning to present. As a critical review of the history of the writing history of Modern Architecture, this study tends to be a meta-history and criticism of historical text. This study try to analyse historiographical project of Modern architecture at specific phase since the beginning of modern architecture. The historiography of Modern architecture shows that writing a history is making a discourse of Modern architecture as a imaginative representation to define and justify Modernism in architecture. The analysis of canonic text since early 20th century proves that the history of writing history of Modern architecture played a critical role not only to shape of our ideal but the practice of architecture with a ideology construction in retrospect. With a name of truth or morality they made myths about the modernity in architecture. So we can find deep 'Hagelean Unconscious' in writing history of Modern architecture not even the first generation of historians but the second generation who were influenced by earlier writer in spite of their intention of revision and overcoming, which is in itself the key concept of Hegel's philosophy of History. Under this kind of 'operative' discourse our view point of Modern architecture were confined and the historiography of Modern architecture itself was narrowly defined as a kind of melodrama that a few architect and work of art matters. The rise of critical history fundamentally has changed the way of seeing and writing the history of Modern architecture. but it has also a new kind of dilemma as regard to writing history and involving practice. This review of historiography traces the texts of historians as like Pevsner, Giedion, Banham, Rowe, Tafuri, Frampton, and Curtis relating to different discours making. When we consider Benjamin's famous concept of constellation, writing history necessarily is a kind of montage making in time and we always need to recognize the historicity of historiography.