• Journal of architectural history
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.63-74
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• 2016

The Korean architect Chung Guyon(1945~2011) is the translator of the Korean edition of Gourna: A Tale of Two Villages(1969) written by the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy(1900~89). This fact, along with the facts that Chung changed the topic of his graduation thesis(1983) for UPA no.6 in Paris and that he became a supporter of earth architecture after he returned to Korea in 1986, confirms that Chung was strongly influenced by Fathy's architecture in Gourna project. Therefore, the present paper aims at extracting didactic characteristics of Fathy's architecture from the book and comparing them with those of Chung's architecture. The categories of the characteristics extracted from the book (or his architectural activities in the Gourna project) are: clay/earth architecture; communicative and cooperative architecture; and critical stance towards society, and these are commonly found in Chung's architecture, too, not without differences from Fathy's owing to the gap between the two architects' contexts. Reviewing these characteristics, this paper argues that Fathy and Chung tried to improve society in each context, working as both architect and social activist.