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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.

Focusing on the emergence of the basic course in American schools of architecture, in particular Gyorgy Kepes' courses at MIT, this paper studies the transformation of architectural pedagogy during the years after World War II. Kepes centered his architectural pedagogy on the picture plane, which was to function as the primary media for applying the principles of Gestalt psychology, that is the identification of the whole and its parts and the reciprocity between the internal human organism and the outside world. Kepes hence introduced a set of unconventional visual practices that were not readily assimilated to architectural conventions. Paralleling the establishment of the basic course, MIT also formulated a functionalist and spatial pedagogy with its two initial design studios, courses 4.721 and 4.722. These studios shared the notion that architectural design evolved from the inside toward the outside, an idea that took hold not just in the pragmatic environment of MIT's studios but also in conservative academic programs as well as in popular magazines, picture books, and exhibitions for the consumer public. The architectural surface became inseparable from the objects of art, furniture, and design, all of which were to be the generators of space. Hence, during the 1950s, the architectural surface provided a specific locus of intersection between the visual fundamentals of the basic course and the working principles of architectural design. Kepes, however, had by this time become disillusioned with architecture's potential as the medium of unity. Though he maintained the Gestalt logic of identity, he expanded it toward the goal of grander synthesis of society and consciousness freeing himself from the constraints of disciplinary instruction. In the case of Kepes, the mediating role of the picture plane was foregone in a regressive turn toward a primal, innocent, and direct experience.

This paper is a study of Le Corbusier's trace regulateur of the 1920s, particularly its role in the design of the Villas La Roche-Jeanneret and Stein-de Monzie. It proceeds on the basis of the following three themes: first, the relation between the regulating line and the dom-ino frame; second, its status as a proportional device based not on a module system but one that defines relations; third, its function as an essential practical device in the design process. In the Villa La Roche-Jeanneret, the embedded horizontal planes of the dom-ino frame were constant, but the vortical lines of the columns were altered according to the changes in plan. Initially, a left-hand bay window formed a symmetry with the right-hand bay window, the only constant in the design process. With subsequent changes, mullion sections of the horizontal window and roof elements came to provide the reference points for the regulating line. Eventually, a regulating line different from the one that controlled the bay window and the elongated volume came to control the entrance hall of Villa La Roche, resulting in three different kinds of regulating lines in the final version. In contrast to the Villa La Roche-Jeanneret, a singular and consistent regulation line was anticipated in the earliest design stages of the Villa Stein-de Monzie. The repetition of its A:B grid and the standard $2.5m{\times}1.0m$ sliding window determined the proportions of both its plan and elevation, and thus the regulating line became 'automatic,' losing its viability as a practical tool. Though the regulating titles of the La Roche-Jeanneret look as if they were an afterthought, drawn after the design was complete, they were most active, requiring tenacity and discipline in their application. On the other hand, the seemingly 'redundant' regulating line of the Villa Stein-de Monzie gains its raison d'etre from the dom-ino frame. Its cantilevers and uninterrupted horizontal window could be used in decisive fashion because of the guarantee that the correct proportion would always be maintained. Thus we discover that Le Corbusier's discipline of the 1920s had a certain spectrum of flexibility. His 'parti' ranged from the extremely loose and malleable grid of the Villa La Roche-Jeanneret to the fixed grid of the Villa Stein-de Monzie. In different ways, these projects retain the tension between the dom-ino frame and the regulating line. For Le Corbusier, as much as the grid was an object with fixed attributes, it was also an active medium manipulated by the will of the architect.

Centered on Durand and Le Corbusier, this study analyses the changing status of the grid and axis in modern architecture. In the Renaissance, the taxis grid operated as a contour grid, defining the elements and space of the building as part of closed harmonized world. In his Pre'cis des lec., ons d'architecture, Durand provides the most explicit demonstration of a new modem grid in which its lines function as spatial and structural axes. In principle these axes are coordinates for the placements of a priori elements but in Beaux-Arts practice, as Durand himself acknowledged, they involve a simultaneous process in which the spatial axis sets up the basic parti and the structural axis is developed into the building's poche'. As a coordinate, Durand's grid provides a place for the 'subject' to enter the architectural process. At the same time, it is the object of the subject's gaze, the dense site of the subject's transformative actions. Though Le Corbusier is noted for his frequent attacks on the academic system, his architecture should be seen within the continuity of the classical tradition. He redefines the Beaux-Arts axis as a moving and seeing observer, and continues the discipline of the plan, the essential discipline of the Beaux-Arts system. In his dialectics, an intellectual scheme which extends to his commentators, the intention and will of the subject must come in tune with the objective material form of the building. Like Durand, Le Corbusier's axis provides the medium for the subject to enter. Unlike the Beaux-Arts system, however, Le Corbusier's mobile subject no longer has a holistic view of the building previously provided by the central axis. If there is a parti for Le Corbusier, it consists of the domino grid as a potential, but nonetheless, tangible form. In comparison with the Beaux-Arts structural grid, his gaze no longer lingers on their lines because they no longer constitute a formal process tied to the development of a thick articulated structure. Le Corbusier's grid constitutes a 'loose' form, one that breaks down the hierarchical nature of the Beaux-Arts system.

This paper is a study of the Beaux-Arts discipline of architecture, as it was established during the late nineteenth century in America. It focuses on trio particular modes of vision and representation that were at the heart of the discipline. The paper argues that Beaux Arts vision was centered on what may be called 'planar vision'; a mode of seeing through which the multiple aspects of the architectural design imbedded in the plan were read and re-interpreted. Similarly Beaux-Arts training in drawing required its student to draw within the multiple layers of historical traces; the new design being in effect a new layer placed on often unseen traces of monumental precedent. The theoretical basis of this practice was not based on history but on the concept of composition. Composition, in the French tradition was regarded more a matter of practice than theory. The Anglo-American discourse on composition, on the other hand, formed a body of theoretical literature based on formalist assumptions. There was, however, a fundamental gap between these formalist theories of composition and the 'layered' modes of vision and drawing involved in the design process. This practice leaned more on the modern romantic notion of 'intuition' for its theoretical basis, once again forming an immanent conflict with the mimetic practice of classical and historical architecture. The paper draws a picture of a discipline centered on a 'theory of the plan,' a potentially modern discipline integrated with classical forms and details. It was clearly effective as a practice. However, structured by conflicts between theory and practice, history and form, mimesis and intuition, the Beaux-Arts was unable to defend itself at the philosophical and theoretical level the modernists engaged their attacks on this system. At the same time, the paper poses the question of how different modern architecture is from this system. Is not the 'theory of plan,' in its many transformations and guises, still the central discipline of twentieth century modern architecture, and is it not structured by basically the same kind of conflicts and paradox that were immanent to the Beaux-Arts system.

Surveying the literature of architecture since the nineteenth century, one can identify two dominant but problematic attitudes, among several, that pursue the task of defining what modern architecture is and should be. The first is the search for meaning and the second is the pursuit of form. This study, following Michel Foucault, asserts that the dual formation of meaning and form is a historical product of modernity and belies architecture's uncritical dependence on language since the nineteenth century. This study is a critique and historical analysis of this pernicious reliance, and constitutes a first step towards thinking of alternative relations between 'words and architecture' in the modern world. In reconstructing this problematic, the paper has called on Foucault's seminal The Order of Things. The study follows his construction of the Renaissance, the Classical and the Modern episteme, and in brief fashion, reconstructs the relation between language and architecture in each episteme. In analysing the Modern, the study focuses on Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics. Hegel placed architecture in a genre hierarchy within which architecture, because of its material basis, was fundamentally limited in its ability to express the Spirit. For Hegel it was, among the arts, poetic language, and beyond art, the language of philosophy, through which the Absolute Spirit could be atttained. Much of post-nineteenth century architecture has remained within the shadow of Hegel, where architecture's materiality is perceived to be a burden, and in order to secure its relevance in modern society, architecture was deemed to pursue the role of language. As the most recent and sophisticated example of architecture's pursuit of form, the paper analyses the work of Peter Eisenman. Though Eisenman's theoretical writings are replete with post-Hegelian rhetoric, his architecture remains dependent upon the model of language, albeit a structuralist one. The paper concludes that ultimately, the pursuit of meaning and form is unable to face the crucial issue of value in modernity. While the former decides to easily what it is, the latter evades the issue itself. The second installment of this ongoing study will pursue a third possibility alluded to by Foucault, where language remains silent, pointing only to its 'ponderous' material existence.