The purpose of this research is to understand Ko Yu-seop’s perception of ‘contemporary emerging architecture’ in the West by investigating into his two early 1930s’ articles: ‘On Emerging Arts, Particularly the Cutting-edge Architecture’ (Jan. 1931) and ‘Russian Architecture’ (Dec. 1932). As a result of the investigation, it is argued that he attempted to systematically describe his contemporary architecture, from the concept of ‘modern’ to representative architectural theories, and his suggested reference list is considered meaningful since it illustrates one aspect of how modern architectural knowledge was transferred to Korea at that time. As his limitation, however, it should be pointed out that a significant part of his writing was a verbatim translation of the Japanese critic Takao Itagaki’s New Art Acquisition (1930). Nevertheless, the two articles give us a valuable understanding related to his socialist tendency, his preferred commune-type city-cum-architecture that reflects the ideology, etc. Hereafter, this understanding needs to be further discussed in both study areas of art history and architectural history in Korea.

The goal of this paper is to analyze the relationship between pedagogy and the emergence of contemporary Korean architecture after the 1990s. For this purpose, the paper deals with the education and work of two important contemporary Korean architects, Kim Seung Hoy and Choi Wook. Kim and Choi were part of a group of young architects that went abroad in the 1980s to study at the centers of architectural education in Europe and the United States. Through their education and work, the paper discusses the relationship among education, history, and design practice in architecture. During their studies at Michigan University and IUAV in Venice, they were commonly influenced by Colin Rowe through their studios. In the case of Kim Seung Hoy, he was introduced to the Beaux Arts logic of the analytique and esquisse through the teaching of Steven Hurrt, a disciple of Colin Rowe. Choi Wook took studios that involved formal analysis and comparison of Palladio and Le Corbusier. The paper further analyzes their works in Korea by employing the concepts of fragments and systems, ignorance and knowledge. The paper concludes that, in Korean contemporary architecture, fragments and systems, ignorance and knowledge, lie in the middle of ongoing creative process that must distinguished from the West, where architectural history provides an established tradition of systematic knowledge.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the features of the avant-garde architecture in the end of the 20th Century based on the ontology as a metalanguage. In view of the results so for achieved, it is possible to say that the thought of becoming, topology, rhizome thought and the Deleuze's concepts of the fold and the event as ever-changing and evolving at any given time are found in the avant-garde architecture, and the introduction of ontological thought into architectural design encourage hopes for a more natural and existential quality in architecture. However, the avant-garde architecture in the end of the 20th century disclosed the limitation in the architectural expression of ontological thought due to the lack of fully understand on ontology. In conclusion, the ontological approach in architecture offers a new morphological methodology and a new way of programming considering the existential aspect of space through the bricoleur's means leaving the ontological meaning of architecture itself.

This paper investigates morphological theory as an intellectual framework for research and design. The first part of the paper will review morphological studies in the fields of urban geography, urban planning and architecture, particularly in England from the 1940s to the 1980s. While urban geographers and planners were concerned primarily with town plans, building forms and land use, architectural theoreticians were more interested in the topological relationship between urban and architectural space. The underlying premises and principles of these two approaches will be reviewed. The second part of the paper will focus on typology in Europe and North America. The reinterpretation of typology by Italian architects helped to bridge the gap between individual elements of architecture and the overall form of the city. However, typological theory became less accessible in post-war England and the United States. After 1980, the debate on typology became muted by the onset of vague notions such as functionalism, bio-technical determinism, and contextualism. This paper will propose a redefinition of morphology as a heuristic device, in contrast with the dichotomic view of urban morphology and architectural typology. Morphology will be shown to combine the geometrical and topological; the intentional and accidental; the real and abstract; and a priori and a posteriori. The last part of the paper discusses the lack of comparative theories and methods surrounding the physical form of architecture and the city by Korea commentators. Empirically rooted facility planning, non-comparative historical studies, and iconographic criticism emerged as a central preoccupation of architectural culture between the 1960s and 1980s, a time when international debate on architecture and urbanism was most intense. This paper will give consideration to the built environment as a dynamic physical entity and space as an epiphenomenon of daily urban life, such that collaboration between urban designers, architects, and landscape architects is seen as both beneficial and necessary.