Presentation and Representation of Modernity in Modern Architecture - On Exclusion of Ornament and Emergence of the surface -

근대주의 건축에서 모더니티 표상의 문제 - 장식의 배제와 표면의 부각을 중심으로 -

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.