Introducing International Style, P. Johnson and H. R. Hitchcock gave three standards to be the Modern, volume and surface, regularity, and exclusion of applied decoration. In spite of the negation of stylistic, formal approach in the Modernist Manifestoes, one usually have understood Modernity in Architecture with its formal character, especially with no ornament and flat, abstract, white surface. Modernism as a new paradigm in architecture have emphasized that there is no representation of anything outside and only present architecture in itself. They said that Modernism only cared about the language of Architecture without figural reference. So apparently there is no way to prove to its Modernity with formal condition. Modernity is in Spirit and contents. But actually we understand well its existence by visual communication This study deals with this difficult situation how Modernity represents itself without visual media and asks the question how simultaneously it presents its thingness and materiality In order to analyse contradictory situation between representation and presentation in Modern Architecture we need to survey the historical process of changing position of ornaments and its meaning in time. With the crisis of representation the role of ornament have seriously changed and divided. It caused the two situation in pre-Modern Architecture. Firstly, Architecture tend to be a high art and formal expression became important much more. The Use of Ornament became a kind of fashion to show the power, class, money. Secondly, Ornament lost its cultural weight and the structure and material aspect became the central in architecture. Rational Structuralism would be the essential character in Modern Architecture. Here the theory of G. Semper and A. Loos on cladding(dressing) and Ornament can help its problems and limits. In the situation without conventional ornament Modernists need to present modernity with new media that only show the thing itself and by that it does not represent any thing else as like the value, idea outside buildings. They believed that only it concerned esthetics and morality in architecture. But in reality it referred to art and machines as like ships, aircraft, and cars. By excluding Ornament and showing the process of clearing, abstract, flat, white surface 'represent' Modernity by the indirect way referring the concept of transparency, reason, sanitation, tectonics, etc. An Ideology and myth intervened architectural discourse to make the doxa about the representation in Architecture. Surface must be a different kind of media and message that can communicate in different way with compared to conventional Ornament. Decorated Shed by R. Venturi and Post-Functionalism by P. Eisenman, that are the most famous post-modern discourse, shows well difficult and contradictory condition in contemporary architecture concerning representation and form, meaning and form.

According to Martin Heidegger’s argument that human emotions and feelings play an important role in defining modernism, the elements of melancholy must have been a crucial element in characterizing modernism. In this respect, T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and The Waste Land that are regarded as reflecting modernistic phases have been analyzed to show how the elements of melancholy appear in them and to what degree they present modernity. The keen awareness of fragmentation and the impossibility of totality in modernism as part of modernity has been shown to have a lot to do with melancholy. The concept of melancholy is not a brand new term which was born in modernism, rather it was a “reinvented” and “reassessed” concept that already has quite a long history. On the threshold to the contemporary era, a number of critics and writers came to be deeply interested in and did a lot of research about melancholy. Remarkably, modern critics are doing insightful studies that can illuminate the deceitful desires that are produced by capitalist society that leave people in discontentment permanently, which acts like a sense of loss. Their analyses about the mechanism of melancholy are expected to help analyze the relation between melancholy and capitalist society. In that aspect, even though melancholy appeared in modernism era, still the concept of melancholy seems to be a great issue that can be very helpful to understand the cultural aspect of contemporary era.

본고는 서양의 시대정신인 모더니티라는 자아이상을 추구하는 과정에 새롭게 그들의 인식에 등장한 동아시아풍의 건축이 그들의 당대 건축문화 형성에 미친 영향을 연구해 보고자 한다. 시기는 모더니티에 대한 고민이 한창인 18세기 중엽부터 20세기 초반으로 설정한다. 동아시아로 한정하여, 근대 서양 건축문화 형성 과정에 동아시아의 어떠한 점이 어떻게 개입되어 궁극적으로 그들의 20세기 모더니즘 건축에 일조 했는지 시기별로 구분하여 살펴볼 것이다.