Chapter 3: Authenticity in Different Degree of Displacement Architecture
3.3 Urban Leisure Vernacular Architecture in Las Vegas
3.3.2 Signage and Symbol Before Form in Architecture
other architectural styles that are not directly applicable for leisure place like Las Vegas may still be able to use only signage, in co-development of the commercial vernacular as Venturi mentioned. But the exotic experience of the leisure place needs more than that.
The arrival of Reviera is probably the beginning of displacement in the leisure city for the first time. But the name of the project and the format of the activities and the interior space to be presented are clearly referred to the beach city for sure until the arrival of Caesars Palace the displacement architecture officially started to develop for Leisure and Tourism.
Figure 92 Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi at The Strip Signage Retrieved from www.archdaily.com/894735/love-in-las-vegas
Venturi's focus at the time may have been a more refined, neoclassical sense of style, but he didn't care whether it was stonework or studwork; his architecture was founded on signs and symbols. Vegas represented the pinnacle of this strategy. If he was correct, then it was probably the new Rome. This was a bold decision for an architect who had sat beneath Kahn's towering Piranesi. It would be dishonest to suggest that Scott Brown was the driver, although she had a background with a larger emphasis on social and urban planning (Jane Jacobs over Robert Moses) and she developed the pedagogy. They were essentially doing what all ambitious newlyweds do: they were combining their resources.
The Strip was already implementing the "Bilbao effect" before the current urban redevelopment in the United States began, by replacing its streetside parking lots with promenades. The Las Vegas Strip does not exist in the city of Las Vegas. First and foremost, you must understand that this 4.2-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard is the most heavily marketed and branded collection of adult theme parks in the world. It has surpassed Mecca in terms of tourist traffic since 1999, making it one of the most popular destinations on the planet. The Strip was developed in Paradise, a town in Clark County, Nevada, that was founded by hotel developers who wanted to avoid city taxes, regulations, and utility concerns by building outside the city limits. Paradise was built in 1950, and since then, the Strip's openly commercial and hedonistic nature has grown tremendously, particularly in the 1960s and the 1990s. (Korody, 2016)
However, what sort of urban experience has resulted? With its waves of pulsating lights and scrolling video screens; its riot of clashing, garish architectural styles; its wide central river of frequently gridlocked traffic; and the swarms of tourists, all dressed with aggressive casualness and milling blindly in every direction, the Strip can appear and
feel like the concretization of unplanned chaos to a visitor. It also demonstrates that there is no need to apply the term urban planning to the Strip because it is only the result of money dictating every aspect of the built environment.
Figure 93 Signage in the Strip and the analysis from Learning From Las Vegas Retrieved fromwww.re-thinkingthefuture.com/rtf-architectural-reviews/a5183-book-in-
focus-learning-from-las-vegas-by-robert-venturi-steven-izenour-denise-scott-brown/
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown describe their findings in a paper entitled "A Significance for A&P Parking Lots, or, Learning from Las Vegas" by marshaling a substantial quantity of information to support their conclusions. Certain commentators have interpreted the text's suspension in a substrate of visuals as an attempt to evoke the lived experience of the comic strip. However, the illustrations are not simply depictions of structures or advertising. Rather, the writers offer numerous maps illustrating demographics, activity patterns, and urban structure, as well as charts tracing topics such as symbolism in urban space across history and the distinction between ancient and contemporary monumentality. There is a masquerade of scientific rigor in this abundance of charts, graphs, tables, and maps — a type of a-theoretical empiricism.
But in term of the leisure architecture development the review from Venturi may have to look at different view. The strip originally was developed from the vast and empty land in the desert itself which a bit outskirt of the original Vegas City Center. The El Rancho the first resort that was developed to form the strip later on, having to use the signage for attract the people from the highway to stop and stare at their place. The job of the signage originally was just like that. But later on with the arrival of series of
development from the leisure resort, the signage is not enough to please the public lust for exotic leisure life, as usual as in the past. The first series of the resort developments during the first decade of the strip include El Rancho(1941), Hotel Last Frontier(1942), Flamingo Hotel(1946), The Thunderbird(1948), Desert Inn(1950), Sahara(1952), Sands(1952).
These developments fiercely compete with one another, and apparently beyond their architectural statement about monumentality.
The signage and the façade was the tools to communicate with the exterior, some even use the strategy of put the pools and bikini girls next to the road to attract visitors. But mainly the real magic was inside the building, both of the spectacular show and the interior space was the main tools. They always compete together and have to change the show content and also often new renovations of the spaces. The development and transformation of Las Vegas and the Strip after the published of Learning from Las Vegas is really step up to the next level when the signage alone is not enough to define the new authenticity for leisure and tourism anymore.