In contemporary architectural discourse, the concept of space is ubiquitous, yet its historical genesis and theoretical underpinnings in Gottfried Semper's seminal theoretical work remain under explored. This study investigates the reception and integration of Semper’s architectural theory into modern discourse, tracing its trajectory from August Schmarsow, to Nikolaus Pevsner, to Sigfried Giedion. While Semper’s “cladding theory” had initially been understood in terms of both its relation to physical properties and structural and functional values, leading to an expansion of cladding as a new genre of art, i.e. arts and crafts, Semper’s “architectural theory” instead explained cladding theory in terms of space. In disseminating Semper’s theoretical work, Schmarsow was especially important as he himself played an increasingly prominent role in expanding the boundaries of modernist architectural theory and practice from the beginning of the 20th century on.

Historically, rhythm has played a key role not only in musical composition, but also in architectural design. In 1893, architectural theorist and art scholar August Schmarsow, in "The Essence of Architectural Creation,” created a new definition of architecture as space-creation and characterized rhythm as a design principle. However, this new idea was confronted by Heinrich Wölfflin. While Schmarsow’s theory represents a dynamic world-view based on anthropomorphism, the architectural theory of Wölfflin is based on the notion of harmony, displaying a kind of conservative stasis. These two main streams have greatly influenced the development of modern architecture. The concept of space has prevailed in the discourse of modern architecture, but the principle of rhythm has seldom received any positive recognition. This article introduces and develops the concept of rhythm and disputes whether Behrens and Frankl in particular, two who dispute Schmarsow’s theories, have used the concept of rhythm in terms of space. I conclude that they could not overcome the notion of the physical—the body —, thus their use of the term rhythm is incongruous with the notion of space. The idea of rhythm in architectural creation remains an up and coming idea.

Alberti's De re aedificatoria is the earliest case in the history of Italian Renaissance architectural treatises dealing with recovery of antiquity through textual and archaeological pursuits. The key source of the Renaissance theoreticians was Vitruvius' De architectura. However, Alberti was keenly aware of inaccuracy and Hellenization of Latinity in this classical text, and tried to compensate them in his own treatise. Furthermore he claimed a reformed discipline of the architects as well as the patrons, and prescribed how future buildings and cities should be built, based on the proper authority of ancient architecture in proper and intelligible Latin. Such an adaptation of classical usage in order to reestablish a modern norm preceded in his earlier work Momus, a satire on the contemporary Italian society of his own by following the model of Lucian. Alberti's suggestion of proper government in Momus's phrase was expanded in De re aedificatoria, for he consider the buildings are subject to the rules of morality and public interests. He proclaimed that the nature of beauty is the reasoned harmony of every part within a body, and architectural beauty also lies on the harmonized arrangement of all the elements within an individual building and of all individual buildings and facilities within a city. For the architects to execute this task, he formulated the concept of lineanenta, the form derived from the mind in order to prescribe the proper place, numbers, scale, and orders for whole building structure. It is the future oriented city-plans and building designs to serve the public interest and the good of all the individual citizens who make up the City-State that Alberti pursued in his treatise.

Louis I. Kahn is cleary one of 20th century great architects. The character of his philosophy of architecture can be condensed as simple words; Architectural Essence, because the very nature of his work based on historicity is so fundamental. Some contemporary architects and architectural critics regard it as a symbol of Post-Modern Architecture era expressing relative multiplicity or an expression of Heideggerian existentialism, but others do as the attribute of fundamentalist like absolute Plato's Idea. Comparing the former, studies of the latter theme have been executed superficially and somewhat biasedly for last decades. In the context, this paper attempt to reanalyze Kahn's idea of ‘Architectural Essence’ with the deep view of Platonist focused on the concept of binary opposition and causality.

The purpose of this paper is to apply Stephen C. Pepper's contextualism to architecture: to interpret the former in the light of architectural theory, and ultimately to liberate architecture from the Western 'Idea' and return it to its context. The major concepts of Pepper used in the paper are quality, texture, spread, change, fusion, strand and context. Pepper's contextualism makes us realize that architecture cannot be separated from its context where human beings, history, neighborhood, and nature are all interpenetrating, and create a quality. Contextualism thus teaches us to make an effort to understand the region where we belong, and to create an architectural device that interrelates form and function of an architecture with its space-time environment, or its strand, texture and context.

Since 1960, the change of architectural trend was dominated by two factors ; the one, the introduction of theory of language (including semantic, syntactic, pragmatic, linguistic, semiotic, structuralism, post-structurism) in design concept, the other, the adaption of high technology in building construction. In particular, the theory of language played an important role in the emergence of new tendency, which could be the alternative of modern architecture. Post-modernism and Typology in the 1960-70s, Deconstructivism in the 1980s and 'Folding' architecture in the 1990s, have continually borrowed a theoretical base from the thee of language. Placing the focus on the relation of contemporary architecture and theory of language with the interdisciplinary view, this study comes to the conclusion that the diverse architectural tendencies since 1960 depend on the 'champ d'enonce', which Michel Foucault, French philosopher, defined in his <Archeology du savoir>. The writings of many architects, like Robert Venturi, Micheal Graves, Aldo Rossi, Peter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Tschumi, Gerg Lynn demonstrate our conclusion. This is an important finding which make possible consistent understanding about contemporary architecture.

According to Post-modernists including deconstructivists, as Modernism is changed into Post-modernism, the paradigm is shifted from consciousness to language. The paradigm of consciousness corresponds to representational language, and the paradigm of language to self-referential one. In post-modern age most of architects are wandering what kind of language architecture is. Some theorists contend that architecture is representational, and others that it is self-referential. Allan Colquhoun, who is known as one of the best architectural theorists inUnited States, accepts both the former and the latter, but fails to reveal the meaning and the limitation, of the two languages. Although he believes that the representational language of architecture ('figure') is the source of self-referential language of architecture('form'), he never clearly answers what kind of language architecture. In order to overcome the limitation and the meaning of Colquhoun's figure and form, and synthesize the two language, this essay appropriates Martin Heidegger's some concepts, 'ready-to-hand,' 'present-at-hand' and 'being-in-the-world' to make a theoretical framework for 'image' which prevails over and synthesizes 'form' and 'figure.' Since Image is based upon both 'being-in-the world' and 'ready-to-hand,' it is the source of 'form' and 'figure.' When 'image' is fragmented, the former and the latter emerge. Image is therefore both the former and the latter because it represents and self-refers a world as a reality.