近代臺灣因為統治政權從屬於前近代封建特質的清帝國的手中落入具有近代性的日本殖民政府，讓剛開始起步的臺灣建築史研究架構得以脫離僅以漢人為中心的中國建築史脈絡的論述。特別是原住民建築的研究，在先進的人類學、歷史學者、先史學研究者們具有先驅性的研究引導與刺激下，打下了研究原住民建築之基礎，建築學界也很難得地出現了專以原住民建築為對象的《臺灣高砂族の住家》專著問世。 因為有了原住民建築的研究成果，在戰前建構了以擁有原住民建築、閩粵漢人建築、西洋建築與日本殖民建築為內容的「臺灣建築史綱」。但這也是要在昭和10年（1935年），人類學對臺灣原住民所屬研究集大成《臺灣高砂族所屬の研究》付梓以後才有的事情。同時也是日本邁向建構東亞共榮圈的時代，因此臺灣建築史的研究可以被視為日本帝國內相關學術研究的一環，也可以視為它是在地專業者建構自主性建築史動向的活動之一。

Due to the transformation of sovereignty, from the feudalistic Manchu Dynasty to colonization of Japan, the discourse of architectural history in Taiwan was altered. Taiwan architecture was not always only the prototype from Fujian and Guangdong, but there is a great variety of aboriginal housing were researched before World War Two, they are compositions of the architectural history in Taiwan from then on. Because of the results of the studies on the dwellings of aborigines, or Takasazoku, and other building types of habitants in Taiwan, the following contents of Taiwan’s architecture was composed, namely aboriginal housing, building belonged immigrants from mainland China, western architecture and the architecture built by Japanese during the colonial period. However, Taiwan’s architecture is not close to the architecture of Japan, the time which the mentioned integrated contents are drawn up should be after the completed results were reached by anthropologist. That is the late of Japan colonization of Taiwan.The movement of studies on Taiwan’s architecture can be regarded as a supplement of the architectural history of Japanese Empire after 1930’s and it was also can be considered an independent movement of the local architectural historians for establishing the architectural history of Taiwan.