Learning from Las Vegas

Las Vegas, and the first thing that flashes my mind are the neon
lights adverting from the different signs lightening up the 6.8 km long stretch
of ‘the Strip’ where they are placed on the top so they can be seen from
anywhere. I prepared myself for what possibly I could learn from a road which
is basically filled with chaos of people walking on the street, the tourist
observing the surroundings and yellow cars driving carefully but as soon as I
dig deeper inside the text I was shocked and more over impressed by the
amount of design and architectural values this place had to offer. Learning
from Las Vegas by Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, and Steven Izenour is
an attack on architectural pretension and appreciation of vernacular.
In late 1960s of America , Modern Architecture went through failure
because of Pruitt Igoe’s massive housing blocks were being demolished. There
was a need for something new and Venturi’s approach can be easily rooted.
Just as the Modern Movement was a reaction to Nineteenth Century
Eclecticism, Post-Modernism was a reaction to Modernism. Venturi, known
as the godfather of Post-Modernist said that modernist were avoiding the
ornamentation and symbol in a building but they didn’t realise that they
created a building as a symbol itself unknowingly.
The A&P parking lots, may be in an environment of enormous spaces
and high speeds but according to Venturi architectural form is not enough to
attract attention. Signs in Las Vegas compensate for what the buildings may
lack in commercial persuasion and I agree with that because symbolism is
very much needed in urban civilization which takes me to the metaphors
created by Venturi.
Venturi grouped the buildings into two categories which are the duck
and the decorated shed. The duck referred to buildings that represented the
meaning itself. They were the symbol itself. But Venturi leaned towards the
other category that is decorated shed where function of the building was
identified by a symbol or sign. The modern International Style buildings were
all ducks. Duck buildings are essentially buildings where the form follows
function perfectly, and they were buildings Robert Venturi disapproved of.
Venturi believed that duck buildings were ordinary and ugly buildings that
pretended to be beautiful and extraordinary. What Robert Venturi proposed
instead was the decorated shed, whereby the building itself is a simple shed
decorated with signs, and it is through these signs that we are made aware of
the building’s function.
While I agree with Robert Venturi’s theory that signs are indeed our
basic unit of communication, somewhere one part of me says that I would like
to design a building that is able to speak to itself, a building where everything
– from the structural systems to the façade and form conveys a certain
message to the user. A building which isn’t depended on decoration while the
other part of me would like the building to get merge with the surroundings
with a little unique element. I agree we are in a society dominated by signs,
and decorated sheds are fully functional and more efficient compared to the
ducks but the duck stands out and that also fascinates me.
The learning and adapting from something that is irrelevant to
architecture or urban is necessity. To conclude I believe Learning from Las
Vegas remains an interesting historical document of a moment in Las Vegas’s
fascinating history.

PAYAL SURTI
B-35

Sources:
(wordpress) (architecturalurbanismhtt2)

References
(n.d.). Retrieved from http://architectureandurbanism.blogspot.in/2010/07/robert-venturi-denise-scott-brown-and.html

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://chaoticblissfulness.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/the-duck-vs-the-decorated-shed/