Abstract: Modernization and localization, as well as the question of where the point of good balance between the two is, have long been important issues in Asian architecture. This article explores these issues through a critical examination of modern architectural education in Thailand from the 1930s to the 1950s—when both the modern practice of and training in architecture were formally established—and demonstrates a hybrid nature of these issues in theoretical, practical, and geographical aspects. With archival materials as evidence, it is revealed how Western architectural theories with Beaux-Arts roots (hailing from France, England, Belgium, and the United States) were hybridized in Thailand, along local constraints, within the cultural, political, and economic contexts of the country’s “nation building” period. The article also highlights out how the English Arts and Crafts ideology helped to appropriate modernism in Thai postwar context. Modern architectural education in Thailand during this period proves the complexity of the concept of modernity and locality in architecture.
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