The Grand Palais, where the fencing competition

The Grand Palais, where the fencing competition for the Paris Olympics took place, features a transparent roof against the backdrop of evening sunset on a Seine River cruise through the Alexandre III bridge. Combining the latest technology and classical beauty of the time, the building shows the fundamental reason for its existence and thereby boasts timeless beauty. It has the value of an eternal future, not a loud form without any technical support or a regressive restoration of the past. Architectural details or unstructured construction techniques are not achieved overnight with the efforts of one or two people. "Architects can do whatever they want. We can do engineering for you!" Elite engineers from the French High Bridge Road School (Ecole nationale des ponds et charuses) say with confidence, as a habit. Constant dialogue and reaction to the past is how to build the future. Architects reinterpret the past and tell memories of places, but technology does not exist in the present but hide and reminisces about the future. Disconnection from the past and absence of the future. This is why we do not receive Pritzker, even if we do.

The Eiffel Tower was made of wrought iron. The wrought iron was easy to process. France, which did not have the manufacturing technology, was able to produce wrought iron by stealing the manufacturing method from England belatedly. The Eiffel Tower was shown off to the world by France, which was able to produce excellent wrought iron, in honor of the Exposition Universal Exposition in 1900. The Grand Palais, too, was built for the Exposition, but used steel as its main structure. This was to show the technological advancements of the time, and as a result, the Grand Palais became famous for their massive glass and steel structures.

On-site assembly and processing are important materials for wrought iron. Due to the nature of wrought iron, technology that can be processed and assembled in various forms in the field is required. Much of it was done by hand, and the connection method using rivets also relied heavily on the skill and experience of field engineers. Wrought iron engineers were well aware of the characteristics of wrought iron and were able to accurately process and assemble using them. Their experience and tacit knowledge directly affected the stability and quality of the structure. Using wrought iron to handle buildings gave birth to a special class of engineers. Close cooperation between architects and field engineers, especially wrought iron engineers, was very important during the construction of the Eiffel Tower. It can be confirmed in various literatures that the tacit knowledge and experience of field engineers played a major role.

Direct communication between architects and field engineers, especially wrought iron engineers, was very important. The ability to immediately solve various problems occurring in the field depended heavily on the engineers' tacit knowledge. It played an important role in bridging the gap between planned design and actual construction. The construction of the Eiffel Tower required close cooperation between architect Gustave Eiffel and field engineers. Continuous communication took place to achieve harmony between design intentions and actual work on the field.

The Grand Palais used steel to apply more modern architectural techniques. As a result, the role of structural engineers became more important, and the role of field engineers was still important, but calculations and analysis at the design stage took on a greater proportion. The late 19th and early 20th centuries were the period when innovative technologies in structural engineering were introduced. Innovative design using steel required the creativity and technical skills of structural engineers. The role of structural engineers became very important in the construction of complex and innovative buildings such as the Grand Palais, which became more prominent in the design and construction process using steel.

According to James E. Gordon, since the invention of steel, the production of iron products has become something that even fools can do. In order to deal with predictable homogeneous steel materials, the intuition and skill of craftsmen such as wrought iron engineers are no longer required, and eventually, the role of craftsmen or engineers was reduced to trivial and simple jobs after industrialization. Rather, the importance of managers and planners has increased in the standardized modern industrial society.
Similarly, the problem of predictable materials is on the same line with the production system of modern architecture established by reinforced concrete. Designing that guarantees the predictable quality of reinforced concrete has not been concerned about the material and structure at some point. This is because if the space is divided into monotonous and stereotyped design actions, the skeleton is planned, and presented as drawings, it will be implemented as a building through a standardized construction process. In this production process, the role of an architect is reduced to the role of a simple drawing engineer. Interestingly, as Manuel de Landa pointed out, this standardized knowledge and function is the area that can soon be replaced by artificial intelligence. The tacit knowledge that responds to materials and situations with intuition and experience is still the last area that is difficult to replace by artificial intelligence.

When I return to Seoul, I am ashamed as an architect to see the inexplicable mess and messiness of the railway history of a country's capital, far from giving me architectural inspiration and grandeur. Let's go to the so-called oolidan-gil. In the midst of shallow and superficial buildings, ironically, the only thing that seems to be of architectural value is a railway bridge that might have been built in Japanese colonial era. Of course, this barrenness is by no means a matter of implementing contemporary architecture. The details of iron and glass, which are hidden even in Europe's unknown railroad history, are a fault of history that we lack. We can see that modern advanced unstructured architecture is based on engineering that inherits this tradition, and is by no means just a form of play.

This problem cannot be solved overnight. However, it is also undesirable to infect younger students with a regressive attitude that this tradition does not exist in our DNA. Similar structures that repeat empty chanting without details and engineering rise everywhere to live alone, just as the manufacturing industry is collapsing and the superficial consumer entertainment industry is inundated. Instead of scaling up, we want to learn more about details and detailed operating principles,