Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Arts Administration, Education and Policy

The dissertation explores Seongsu-dong's hot-place syndrome or the retail gentrification phenomenon in relation to the global urban phenomenon of Brooklyn syndrome, focusing on its retail gentrification aesthetic and its social and cultural meanings. In doing so, the dissertation questions the tendencies within Korean journalism that explain the concept of hipster to explain the hot-place phenomenon as well as studies of gentrification that employ Bourdieu's theory of taste and distinction to comprehend retail gentrification cases. As an alternative, I attempt to rethink retail space design from the realm of taste to the dimension of cultural production, analyzing Seongsu-dong's hot-place aesthetic using Bourdieu's theoretical framework of the field of cultural production. Both archival and empirical data are utilized to examine the topic. The analysis begins by applying the field theory to the hot-place phenomenon, thus deriving the social and cultural meanings of Seongsu-dong's retail space aesthetic in the relationship and interaction between the designers of the retail spaces and their products. The focus then moves to the relationship and interaction between hot-places and the captured and filtered images of the hot-places reproduced in virtual space, deriving the meaning of the hot-place aesthetic under the influence of digital media in present-day hybrid reality. Finally, by analyzing the media representation of the global Brooklyn phenomenon, the dissertation will address the transnational meaning of Seongsu-dong's retail aesthetic.

Committee: Philip Armstrong (Advisor); Richard Fletcher (Committee Member); J.T. Richardson (Advisor) Subjects: Aesthetics; Architecture; Asian Studies; Comparative; Design; Interior Design