Abstract
Based on the ideas of social and environmental psychology, this study explored the way colonial architecture affects people’s sense of national identity, with an emphasis on people’s perception and its transformation. For this study, Japanese colonial architecture built between 1910 and 1945 in Seoul, South Korea’s capital, was taken as a case study. By employing a life history approach as a methodology, this study found that colonial architecture and its relation to identity would be perceived from the various levels of context, such as personal, community and an institutional context. It also identified that various events in people’s lives and in the broader social context also play a crucial role in their perception of the architecture in relation to national identity today. This finding will be useful to scholars and cultural heritage and to urban practitioners who are concerned with historic architecture as a mediator of national identity.