Response to "A Skateboarder's Guide to Architecture or an Architect's Guide to Skateboarding" and "Learning from Las Vegas"

     In "A Skateboarder's Guide to Architecture or an Architect's Guide to Skateboarding", the author raises the question, what is the similarity between those seemingly drastically different two activities. The writer suggests that from skaters, architects could learn that the connection between space and program is shaky; the dynamic relationship between architecture and its users should be noted; and that when architects draw up their design, they should think of the possibility of improvisation by the users. On the other hand, "Learning from Las Vegas" suggests the idea of learning from already existing landscape, Las Vegas; about symbol in space before form in space, how commercial signs work as persuasion connect the drivers to the store, et cetra. Both of the writings talk about how architecture could encompass and produce meanings not on the simple outward layer. Between the two writings, the one which left more striking impression on me was "A Skateboarder's Guide to Architecture or an Architect's Guide to Skateboarding" because I thought it cuts to the heart of problems made in Korean architecture of today. In Korea these days, architecture seems to be completely forgetting about how it is actually the real people who live everyday lives that communicate with the buildings and places. Instead, architects and investors simply focus on making the architecture's outward appearance as grand and pompous as possible; which results in architecture that is quite useless and sometimes even inconvenient and harmful to its real users. I think Bobby Young's writing has something to suggest to this tendency in architecture in Korea these days.