Historic Preservation towards a Critical Regionalism of Gil-ryong Park's Buildings: The Hwashin Department Store and the No-soo Park house

This research examines the historic preservation of Korean modern architecture by applying Kenneth Frampton(1930-)'s concept of critical regionalism. It explores the representative Korean modern architect Gil-ryong Park (1898-1943) and two of his buildings: the Hwashin Department Store (1935) and the No-soo Park house (1937-1938). The former was in the hot spot on the preservation. There were plans to preserve this building but that it ended up being demolished in 1987. The latter building, however, has been preserved and is currently being used as a museum. These two Korean modern buildings are explored through the frame of Kenneth Frampton's critical regionalism, in particular focusing on three important concepts: "dialectical expression," "place-form," and "sustainability." In this sense, this research will provide pioneering research in understanding the preservation of Korean modern architecture through a representative Western modern theory. In the early $20^{th}$ century, Korean modern architecture, which was built during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), could be interpreted as critical regionalism because it represented a dialog between the West and the East, in particular between Western modernism, Japanese modernity, and Korean tradition in the East Asian context. Understanding Korean modernism in this context of a cross-cultural perspective enables scholars to define both the origins and uniqueness of Korean modern architecture.