Two centuries, two countries, two architects, two buildings and two approaches on modularization. Whereas the former was driven by spatial composition, the other was driven by an act of construction. This paper is a retrospective comparison between the Finnish Pavilion at the 1958 World Expo in Brussels and the New Lawuga School, in Qinghai Province, China, 2015. Although built with different functions in mind, both projects share a formal similarity in the application of the module. Furthermore, both architects put a special formed z-shaped wall and roof panel in the center of their design. But, a closer look reveals the differences in their modularity. The construction driven approach for the New Lawuga School by UNITINNO, found answers to various problems for high altitude building projects. When facing serious climatic conditions in far remote mountain villages like Yushu, the modularization of the Z-shaped panel was presented as an ease of construction. Being not only a solution for transportation and material supply, the modular z-panel formed the structure, the envelope as well as the space. In other words, form follows construction. On the contrary, the Finnish Pavilion by wellknown Finnish architect Reima Pietila designed for the World Expo in Brussels was conceived as the morphological answer to modern modularization. In doing so, construction was reduced to the mere implementation of a modular envelope. Varying in size and proportion, the z-panel became an outer skin only. The module left space and structure unanswered. The in-deep presentation of the two cases serves as an example to question the role of construction in modern architecture.
