Chapter 2: Leisure and The Built Environment
2.3 Leisure as Pilgrimage for Pleasure
2.3.2 Monumentality and Iconic in Creating Image for Leisure and Architecture
Decorated shed and Duck are examples of architecture in Learning from Las Vegas. The former's program is communicated through the use of images and signs. The latter's form communicates both its purpose and its meaning. When Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour published their book, they were instrumental in bringing back decoration and symbolism in architecture, as well the architecture of the ordinary. To be beautiful, why couldn't it look like Surrey? Despite the widely held assumption that what is deemed unsightly should be avoided, it is necessary to investigate and comprehend what is actually unattractive.(Korody, 2016)
Only as an architectural communication phenomena is Las Vegas examined here. "Heroic and original" vs "ugly and ordinary": that is the difference between contemporary and postmodern architecture. There are two classes of buildings, each with a distinct name. A "duck" is a building "where the architectural systems of space, structure, and program are submerged and distorted by an overarching symbolic shape," and a
"decorated shed" is a building where ornamentation is applied independently of structure and program.
There's a new Las Vegas strip in place of the one Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour studied in their famous study, but it's as captivating. One of the most distinctive aspects of Las Vegas's new Luxor casino and hotel complex is its emphasis on distinctions.
Selective reconstructions of the past have been made for those who want educational pleasures – or edutainment. This encourages the traveler to take on the role of archaeologist by exploring the desert floor, the model of King Tutankhamen's tomb, and authenticated antiques in the gift shop, all of which are available for purchase. When it comes to analyzing data. (Cass, 2004, p. 245) To explore contested areas, travelers must assume the role of amateur archaeologists as the lines between fiction and truth become increasingly blurred. The settings represent a new sort of monument as well as a new method of interpreting and presenting historical events. They are. Despite this, their roots go deep. Again, like in nineteenth-century Greece, archeological and tourist discoveries in Las Vegas are linked.(Korody, 2016)
2.3.2 Monumentality and Iconic in Creating Image for Leisure and
reconsider some aspects of terms like iconicity, tradition, authenticity and identity. Then, we examine how they play out in three indigenous ventures run and controlled by local community members, which differ from mainstream tourism projects that generally show
“no real concern for the cultural dimensions of place or territory”.
The interfaces between local lives, fiction and performance, to see how iconic architecture might work in indigenous tourism, and when it works well. Iconic can mean a sacred image, a pop star idol, or material and performative manifestations of a culture’s most characteristic traits. Something is iconic when it is instantly recognisable. In tourism, it denotes a culture producing “authenticity” and “tradition” through images and experiences. (Engels-Schwarzpaul & Wikitera, 2019, p. 258) A quickly created, vaguely exotic, iconic atmosphere usually suffices. Speed matters, not accuracy or authenticity.
Traditional culture signals stasis despite little changes, or nothing at all and when placed next to modern, tradition takes on backward connotations. Yet, tradition as we understand it today did not exist until it was imagined as the defining complement of modernity and leisure architecture.
Figure 42 The Roman Colosseum and the 3 duplicated monumentality for leisure in Thailand
Retrieved from www.dw.com/en/rome-colosseum-stage/, www.viator.com/Pattaya- attractions/Colosseum/d344-a28096, wongnai.com
- Temporality and Monumentality in Leisure Architecture.
People's attitudes toward public space changed dramatically in the final decades of the twentieth century, with some bemoaning the loss of open spaces and others advocating for the creation of new public spaces in unusual places like shopping malls or sports complexes, or even in wasteland or parking lots. Some people were pessimistic about new leisure, sports, retail, and transportation initiatives because they feared they would undermine democracy and the welfare state. Others, on the other hand, were more upbeat and eager to take on the challenge of coming up with innovative ideas.
Studies of urban life and discussions of "urbanity," the much-celebrated characteristic of city life, are both growing in popularity at the same time as we bid a fond farewell to an urban civilization and prepare for the cruel dawn of a post-civilian society.
Requiem for a city, the lament of public space, placed the public–private dichotomy at the center stage but has worn out its analytical power. Today's city shows a deep redefinition of public and private space, bringing to the fore an equally dangerous and fruitful ground of situations that are not only hybrid but transcend easy explanation in these terms. Foucault's concept of heterotopia can shed additional light on this perilous ground. Recapitulation and reorientation of the current discussion are possible outcomes of this idea.
It is a word used by Michel Foucault in 1967 in a lecture for architects that refers to numerous institutions and places that disrupt the routine of everyday life.
Foucault referred to these locales as 'hetero-topias'—literally, 'other places'—because they add an element of contrast to the monotony of ordinary life. After going over a few of the more common examples — such as school and military service — as well as the more unusual ones — such as the honeymoon and nursing homes for the elderly — as well as the more specialized ones — such as theaters and cinemas — as well as libraries and museums — we begin to get a sense of the breadth of the concept.
The heterotopia in leisure and tourism was totally connected in the sense of the festive space with the temporarily of time at the moment that was not connected with the current moment and let the tourist define the temporality in time at that moment. On the other hand. Modernity and monumentality have always had a tense relationship. The importance of monumentality in relation to the modern public sphere can be understood against the background of the recurring sense of cultural crisis that
modernity introduces. Uncertainty about the ultimate ideas and ideals that characterize modernity, as well as a lack of clarity about one's own identity, the social order, and the natural world, are all the byproducts of modernity's developments. Either into the transcendental sphere of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human ties, the ultimate and most magnificent ideals have withdrawn from public life. It's not a coincidence that our finest works of art tend to be personal rather than grand.
- Authenticity Reproduction Through the Architectural Image.
In whichever forms indigenous tourism operators may stage them, the histories, traditions, practices and beliefs they choose to share with visitors are, to start with, those that sustain their own economies of mana and feed into the iconic power of their architecture. There will always be tourists who are less interested in ‘authenticity’ than in a good show but when, in momentarily and partially shared worlds, locals and travelers appreciate the same buildings, shared understandings of local and global cultures can develop, and iconic architecture can provide a semiotic, affective or atmospheric common ground. Pure difference may be reflected by complex repetition, because both difference and repetition may be independent of any relation of sameness, similarity, resemblance, or equivalence between events or meanings. (Henry & Hood, 2020, p. 291)
The reproduction of authenticity was gradually introduced to the leisure and tourism development since the flourish of production development from industrial revolution, for instance in the Great Exhibition in 1851 exhibit tons of the repetition of exotic and foreign invention and the difference of new leisure activities. Luxurious products were displayed in the enormous glass edifice, which also featured magnificent art, artifacts, and historic architecture, such as a Roman villa and 50-foot-long replicas of the statues of Ramesses II in Abu Simbel. Models of West Indians and Native Americans adorned the dioramas depicting plants and animals from all around the planet. Plays, operas, and pantomimes were performed in the gardens, including a race in which ponies were ridden by monkeys. Sixty Somalis were brought from Africa to be gawked at by curious South Londoners in a "human zoo."
The idea of difference and repetition that apply to used in the reproduction the existing and define the new leisure and tourism activities and space was related to the idea of Difference and Repetition by Gilles Deleuze almost 200 years later in 1968. The key idea of difference implies divergence and decentering, repetition is associated with
displacement and disguising is totally related to the architectural image and perception development in response to the leisure and tourism authenticity experience to the visitors.
Deleuze regards art in various forms as being a perfect conduit for repetition with a difference because no artistic use of an element is ever truly equivalent to other uses and regards repetitive habit as an important feature of existence. (Price, 2019:95)
[…] it is perhaps habit which manages to “draw” something new from repetition contemplated from without. With habit, we act only on the condition that there is a little Self within us which contemplates: it is this that extracts the new. (Deleuze, 1968, p. 9)
As long as it's the same thing, repetition is horizontal and static. But as long as it's different, it's vertical and dynamic. It is also a play of difference between covered and uncovered repetition, masked and unmasked repetition, horizontal and vertical repetition, and static and dynamic repetition that distinguishes the difference between the two concepts of "sameness" and "differentness." (Scott, 2005)
It's possible that a difference is both internal to an idea and exterior to the conceptual representation itself. Whether it's extrinsic or intrinsic, generic or special, essential or accidental, actual or virtual, it's all the same thing. It could be both large and intense. Differentiation is intensity in and of itself. A method of investigation that considers the extent to which a difference can be expressed as intensity can help to clarify this phenomenon. Extensibilities that are "differentiated" can be used to explain intensity. To put it another way, a lack of similarity between perceptions, or a deficiency in analogy, can be used to subordinate difference to sameness in a variety of ways. This fourfold root of insufficient representation may result from the subordination of diversity to sameness.
(Scott, 2005)
Figure 43 From Leisure activities to the factor that define authenticity in leisure architecture.
There is an expression and a designation to every proposition, says Deleuze.
Both expression and classification have a bearing on whether something is true or false.
Since a proposition must establish a relationship with the truth or falsehood it specifies, these two aspects of logical function (expression and designation) cannot exist independently. As a result, the truth or falsity of a statement is predicated on its meaning.
2.3.2 Authenticity in Displacement Architecture for Leisure Activity