Problems and Tasks of Historiography of Modern Architecture in Korea

The tasks of writing history is to reconstruct the past in order to understand the present condition and to envision the future. Modern architectural histories in the west have assumed this role, from Winckelmann to Giedion. Likewise, history of Korean modern architecture has to serve this purpose. However, existing histories of Korean modern architecture simply list up stylistic changes from western eclectic architecture to modernism without any historical narratives explaining the transition from Korean traditional architecture to modern architecture. History of Korean modern architecture has simply been understood as a unilateral process of transplantation of western architecture into Korea. This paper points out two major problems underlying this kind of historiography of Korean modern architecture. The one is formalistic approach which sees history of modern architecture mainly as a process of formal and stylistic changes. The other is humanistic approach which sees modern architects as agents of history. This paper argues that this kind of history writings has limitations since modernity of Korean architecture is fundamentally different from that of the west. and that specific tasks that Korean modern architectural history has to address are then two folds;(re)connecting the past architectural tradition to the present and forming self-identity of Korean architecture.

한국 근대건축사 서술의 문제와 과제