Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea (대한건축학회논문집)

Architectural Institute of Korea (대한건축학회)
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Technological Phenomenology and Urban Experience: Reading Learning from Las Vegas as the Entanglement of Technology and Experience

기술현상학과 도시경험: 기술-경험 얽힘으로서의 『라스베이거스의 교훈』 독해하기

  • Paek, Seunghan (Department of Architecture, Pusan National University)
  • Received : 2022.06.30
  • Accepted : 2022.11.07
  • Published : 2022.12.30
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Abstract

This paper explores Learning from Las Vegas, the classic text of architecture and postmodernism written by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown first published in 1972, through Scott Lash notion of technological phenomenology. Lash claims that technology is not so much an externalized apparatus but rather a form of life in the sense of Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy called language game. Inspired by Lash's theories of technology and experience, this study argues that Venturi and Scott Brown's book illustrated ways in which one experiences the city with various technologies such as the automobile, billboard, neon sign, photography, and street map. In elaborating the argument, this study defines the term technological phenomenology with the articulation of two strands of experience known as erfahrung and erlebnis; thereby addressing how these two concepts coexist in today's information-saturated society. Additionally, this study takes Learning from Las Vegas as a threshold to investigate the relationship between the diverse forms of technology and experience to explore how the city is experienced in generative modes of perception and sensibility. Lastly, Neil Leach's recent studies of architecture and artificial intelligence (AI) are read against the grain. Leach addresses a flexible notion of technology on one hand, which is however in part formed based on the dualism between technology and experience. By reading how Leach elaborates theories of technology with some of his examples, this study can glean from Learning from Las Vegas without heavily relying on either classic ontology or technological determinism.

Keywords

References

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