Illuminating Las Vegas

In retrospect, the morphology of the modern urban centers of the postindustrial world is based
on forms of vernacular culture driven by consumerism and massmedia culture. The apotheosis of this
merciless commercialization of human environment is represented in tourist resort, city of Las Vegas.
In one way Las Vegas is actual and cultural Mecca of plural society suffused by information
age capital. It is embodiment of the new technological and social developments , a perfect architectural
product of the media driven economy. As Venturi suggests that Renaissance cities of the sixteenth
century in Italy and its urban fabric of dense closed spaces, such as squares, prove to be as big
revelation as insight to modern grand schemes of the broad, great scale spaces in which main object of
interaction is motor vehiclecar. This approach in deriving genealogy urban elements is based on the
remaking of the conventional armature, one conceived in roman forums of great ancient cities, such as
Rome. It opens spatially new visual perceptions modified [altered] by high speed movements and
higher scales communication paths and buildings. Las Vegas is epitome of the new architectural
communication and the critical outlook of the phenomenon after twenty six years from the release of
Learnings from Las Vegas seems hardly different in its nature. It appears even more problematised and
complex.
The analytic structure of the burgeoning gambling city of Las Vegas during the post World
War II period created a new type of armatureStrip. Hence, retroactively, learnings from Las Vegas
were lasting and far-reaching. [all-inclusive for modern urban experience] Its methods are conspicuous
in the new urban developmentstheme parks and virtual cities. Also, similar ideas were incorporated
in megalomaniac entertainment polises , fake cities, such as Disneyworld, Disneyland , or
amusement cities capturing in time and space compression historical past. Nevertheless, unlike such
virtual spaces which are only conceived on reconstruction of time (reality) through technological
means Las Vegas is a product of clear market values and the idea of city space no longer
accommodates only pedestrians but also cars. Las Vegas is an example that focuses on gambling and
entertainment of mass culture, and although its architecture is artificial , it is a new phenomenon in a
city planning, a message city, which completely functions as traditional East coast city. It
communicates through aggressive and fantastic sign sheds in order to attract and provide
entertainment [commodities]. However, Las Vegas is still a real city and though born as a place for
gambling only it is gradually being transformed into residential city, place of conventions. Its
artificiality is not connoted in spatial manipulations in context of technology, but rather in media
based commercial communication.
In the nineteenth century hamlets along railroad tracks developed into gridiron cities focused
on the train station. Today we see similar growth in lowrise suburbs along car-oriented commercial
strips, blossoming into linear cities of time and spatial compression with high-rise towers dense
populations and social centers. These social centers denote major communication and exchange nodes
(K. Lynch) that became landmark through their sign language or public function (casinos, Las Vegas
airport, Strip) In essence, in such urban structures edges of the city become major thoroughfares along
which node, commercial and communication hubs, are located.
The Las Vegas Strip, a three mile-and-a-half-mile highway south of the city limits is the
ultimate version of the commercial strips found on the fringes of almost all American cities. Without
question the Strip is exaggerated example. It offers a way to study the compelling phenomenon of
populist postindustrial cities. Today Las Vegas is no longer anomaly.
If Postmodernism initially showed fascination with the kitsch, mass culture, with TV series,
commercial advertising and motels, with the gradeB grade Hollywood films and science fiction, it is
now accepted norm that infuses aesthetic forms, categories and public contents. It erased ideologies of
Moderne by blurring the difference between high culture and commercial culture. Postmodernism in
architecture stages itself as a kind of aesthetic populism, as it is suggested in Learnings from Las
Vegas offering formal criticism and analysis of architectural modernism. High modernism is, thus,
credited with the destruction of the traditional city core and of its older neighborhood culture.
Transformation of the building of Utopian paradigm of International Style into virtual building in
context of its urban and economic parameters evolved around fusion of the conventional architectural
structure with the media content based on new communication technologies. Sign developed into
symbolic form on the facade or simply became an independent structure for marking buildings front or
entry. Many noted architects grappled with the design of a city which would accommodate car. Many
failed. Le Corbusier campaigned in his work (Complete Oeuvre) for multistory viaduct highways
running on the roofs of apartments in Sao Paolo, Brazil in 1929, in Algiers in 1930 and in Rio De
Janeiro in 1936. Frank L. Wright came closest to a buildable plan with his 1934 Broad Acre City
proposal which swore off high-density concentration in favor of sprawl. These urban projects proved
to be side shows in the course of urban history. To find real, functioning car oriented districts we have
to look to Las Vegas Strip and other strips of commercial roadside. If Henry Fords mammoth River
Rogue factory in Deaborn, Michigan, of 1917 is celebrated as the first mass-scale production car
facility than Las Vegas could be considered as a parallel culture artifact for mass-scale recreation.
Like other Western towns Las Vegas began with traditional Main Street, Fremont Street with
sidewalk and storefronts. The alternative city center that blossomed along the strip, however, looks
nothing like that traditional downtown. It is a landscape of low rising buildings, parking lots along
major highway , commercial signs and enticing advertising images deferring to the car. Essentially,
Las Vegas did not invent suburban forms, but only promoted them to the highest level. Las Vegass
contribution lies in exaggeration and intensifying the features of a strip. Enormous gambling revenues
fueled large budgets for strip hotels and luxurious casino resorts that created virtual oases pulled away
from the major roads. The Strip also concentrated single-mindedly on recreation , avoiding stand-alone
shopping centers found on other strips. Over the years Las Vegas has helped to mature the ordinary
vocabulary of the commercial strip into a vivid urban center with public landmarks , public spaces
and public purposes ?*. It is probable that professional planners were not employed in design of Strip
as it grew by market forces. Liberated from the strictures of architectural theory and stylistic
constraints, strips only responded to commercial taste, economic energy and cultural inspiration of
popular, in mid-century America. Rather than developing methodically Las Vegas Strip grew by
experimental mistakes, wild visions, pragmatic solutions and chaotic collage. It became collective art
where everyone from clients, architect, sign artist, government official were able to contribute in
shaping of the city. In essence, Las Vegas was driven by popular aesthetic where monumental
buildings of International Style were transformed into virtual sculptures. Consequently, Las Vegas
became first urban development based on commercial vernacular architecture, whose building codes
only responded to popular and economic demands in fast-food restaurants , housing ?, malls, gas
stations and cinemaplexes. In some aspects Las Vegas Became outdoor museum of American Pop
culture.
The results following development of Las Vegas into more residential city were not always
successful in avoiding zoning and traffic problems. Like many other cities its faces problems of scarce
water supply and economic stratification. But this experimental prototype of amusement, car city, has
found new solutions for the old infrastructure of traditional city; the means to organize public areas
accessible both to cars and pedestrians ; new creative forms of cultural communications were placed
as orienting landmarks . The sign and graphic symbols became new media of architectural
communication. These learnings were far-fetched and all-inclusive not only for East coast traditional
gridiron type of American cities, but, also, globally. Like consumerist society Las Vegas style is
identified with show business, Hollywood type of modernism, glitz, neon, vulgarity and excess. Las
Vegas has had six architectural eras, so far. First, there was the protostrip of the 1930s, the beginning
period with a few gas stations and billboards lined along a ribbon of asphalt. Except for a few early
casinos downtowns Fremont Street was indistinguishable from the standard Midwest Main Street.
In this early period city was widely based on the conceptual grounds of the Western Town which
imbued the vernacular culture of the 60s and proved to be popular nostalgic artifact , an attraction for
consumerism masses.
The second period, the birth of the Strip began in 1939 when first Casinos appeared, followed
closely by the first motor inn hotel El Rancho Las Vegas designed as a luxurious ranch. Fremont Street
boomed during World War II, as a defense workers flocked to Las Vegas.
The third period era commenced in 1946 with a string of glorified motels (first was Flamingo)
in sumptuous and sophisticated modern style. Las Vegas met national boom in tourism with an
aggressive promotion campaign.
The fourth era began in 1958 with the Stardust Casino. By turning its sign into architecture, the
Stardust established the new, unconventional form to respond to the Strip. It had learned lessons from
the Fremont Street commercial signs, which were already growing in scale (The Golden Nugget) In
turn, downtowns Golden Nugget and Horseshoe Club learned from the Stardust by creating entire
facades of neon.
The opening of Caesars Palace in 1966 marked the fifth period, the era of theme, where each
Strip resort unlike Casinos of Fremont Street created its own mini-world based on history fantasy or
exotic locale.
Around 1980 Las Vegas enters the current, sixth period influenced by large hotel corporations.
The skyline once dominated by high-rise signs competing in size and height is replaced by high-rise
towers. The sparse recreational strip became a dense urban corridor.
The evolution of Las Vegas is not easy to trace and could be only marked by major
development of the forefront casinos, hotels and the most luxuriant and vulgar signs. The Strip can
also be associated in the early post W.W.II period with the vision of mobster Benjamin Bugsy Sigel.
His entrepreneurship produced casinos influenced by seminal vision of Californian type of modernism,
less giddy and neon accented which catered to exclusive clientele from Los Angeles (highrollers as
they were popularly called).
On the plan there are two levels of communication. One that is associated with downtown is the
level of the Main street and the other is linear spine of the sprawl. The Main Street is Fremont street
and first early casinos themes were developed along this armature. It is interesting to note that casinos
and hotels of Fremont street were position mostly around railway station at the opening of the street
reminiscent of Toni Garniers project for City Industrielle functional configuration of urban layers in
sequential zones. At the starting point we can find major communication node that unlike traditional
city acts also as edge to the linear urban sprawl of the Fremont Street. At this node level of
communication between railroad and the Main street level are spatially united creating time/space
compression hub. The actual orientation of Fremont street toward railway station has symbolic value,
and it visually addresses the change between two different spatial domains: the outside space running
along the railroad and enclosure of the street. This stands in opposition to the Strip which is part of
Road 91 and stretches southward to the airport the second, air gate to the city. After entry through
airports terminal everything is adapted to the car measures. From the airport highway Strip slowly
starts and as a car approaches vicinity of the city, urban densification along linear axis becomes
ubiquitous changing perception of the scale. Strip like the highway 91 connect airport with the center
of Las Vegas, and downtown which encompassed Fremont street. Therefore, Fremont street and Strip
are axially normal to each other.
The stark graphic visual designs that address spatial perception from car view at high speeds
begins in 1946 with hotel Flamingo. The lines of these first motor inn type casinos resort were
predominantly horizontal, associated with the long and low entry building. The landscape of the site
had appearance of unusually lavish roadside motel. The signs provided visual attraction board featuring
the performance events of the week while demarcating entry driveway and parking zone. In case of
Flamingo there was a Grier clock, making an odd roadside version of the clocktower of courthouse
squares. The main buildings which housed lavish casino interiors had accent on horizontal extension
and were modern like drive-inn restaurants At the roof level silhouettes of neon lettering against sky
provided dynamic heraldic element at the front of the building. In terms of design strategy the casino
was casually asymmetrical, presenting two wings bridged by a long horizontal wedge of wood floating
over a glass entry. Building was freely placed on the site flush with the approach route to the highway.
A vertical sign pylon pinned down the wide jutting canopy. Each layer of the cedar pulled in slightly
from the one below to emphasize horizontal line, a devise used by Frank L. Wright in 30s. Two walls
were reinforced concrete covered in green ashlar stone or stucco. Overall building reflected familiar
connotation of the West coast Moderne, emblematic of the Wrights emphasis on frontal spatial
layering and horizontal extension. The building played with the scale in approaching view facing the
highway traffic in a sense of diminishing speed through spatial layering. Inside, Flamingo was spacious
and air-conditioned. A waterfall stood to enhance monumentality of the entry. The bar and casino were
oriented toward entrance and their windows were angled to look out on the pool. Garish pink leather
-finish upholstery accented soft greens of the carpet and the wallpaper.
The Flamingo changed the development of Las Vegas. In plan and form it employed
connotational devices of roadside vernacular. Conceptually, it was familiar with architectural spatial
conditions of Frank L. Wrights Modernism. Stylistically, it was dramatically different from El
Rancho and the Last Frontier which played on nostalgic image of Old West frontier cities. However,
the Flamingo opened experimental era where building form will be transformed into more expressive
sculptural shape. Building elements began denoting familiar architectural symbols and a collage of
commercial messages became dominant frontal feature. This will open disjunction between interior and
exterior by transformation of facade into symbolic form divorced from structure behind. The casino
had started evolution into decorated shed with out-of-scale billboard for facade.
The 1952 marked fusion of economic style that surpassed West coast format of Modernism.
Instead of older style of western splendors, this time designers brought popular late Moderne style
from Los Angeles.
The Sands Resort was modeled after common luxurious restaurants of Los Angeles. The
structure was built on the sidewalk which pushed Sands complex close to the highway, although
opposite strategy was preferred by hoteliers because of easier access by car. The view from the
approaching cars has shaped the design, as it had in earlier casinos, but in this case, connotative
expression was even more dramatic and modern.
The casino is basically a warehouse for gambling and covered with flat roof. The cavernous
structure denoted its disjunction from the surrounding exterior and the bordering highway.
The two-story glass entry was adjecent to a wall of marble. Among the circular drive an
extraordinary line of sculptural metal columns and stuccoed pylons containing integral lighting
denoted entry zone for car. Aggressive neon lighting created a screen between the entry and the pool
gardens. Interior space with strong separation from car circulation and surrounding high-speed
landscape has a quality of quaint oasis. Atrium and the pool gardens are enveloped in plan by four two-
story motel wings stretched in the back on the lot.
Crowning Sands was a roadside sign that took a first step beyond Strips conventional
iconography of metal sheets and neon light. It became architectural element itself. At fifty-six feet, it
was taller than the rest of the complex. But, it was integrated into main buildings architecture. It was
no longer signboard, but architectonic element. A secondary sign stood by the southern highway turn.
Later attraction board featuring events and shows was added-on. It set off the race for more sculptural,
visually apealing shapes and monumental aesthetic sophistication.
Now all attraction boards were carefully positioned, as if to bow in direction of the
approaching car view.
The Desert Inn brought its western Modernism up to the roadside with an arch. This was
wooden architrave resting on a pylon of native stone. During 1950s all casinos followed-up this trend
by adding bigger, more garrulous neon signs, lowrise room wings and bigger casinos. Such bold sign
shapes scattered along the Strip in chaotic way made a distinctive imprint in the urban landscape of
formal symbols and lights. The bigger signs, as Venturi already noted, became means to visually
bridge the distance between highway and hotel/casino as the Strip designers experimented with forms
and techniques that worked in the Strips broad landscape. The hotels were still recognizably
architectural. Views across intervening, slow ceremonial spaces of parking lots still contained
conceptually vernacular of roadside motels. There are several principal characteristics of all casinos on
the Strip that were formulated by late 60s during the fifth period when sign becomes architectural
form. The Stardusts sign was unique, but not unheralded. The Flamingos effervescent cylindrical sign
towered over the Strip. The Sands sign was integral to the architecture. The roots of the Stardust sign
also lay in the billboards of the roadside vernacular. The Mint sign constructed the year before on
Fremont Street culminated in exploration of scale, volume, image and color in sign that increasingly
blurred the line between two dimensional and three dimensional architecture. The Stardust sign went
even further. It became architecture.
The Mint pioneered new sign imagery by braking away from the dated streamline pylons of the
Las Vegas and Boulders Clubs. The first post W.W.II casinos are typical examples (Sahara, Flamingo,
Desert Inn) Taking the entire facade as its domain, the Mint sign was three dimensional, sculptural and
complex in animation.
Stardust complex was initially conceived as a collection of individual functions (motel wings,
casino, showroom) without an overall concept of an image. It did not attempt a slab-like desert style
roof of the Desert Inn or an elegant glass entry like the Flamingos. The structure of the building was
tilt-up concrete walls, covered with wood roofs, a method once used in warehouses and industrial
buildings. The two-story motel wings were post-tensioned concrete slab structures.
As Stardust soon took over the neighboring Royal Nevada, casino comprised of
many fragmented elements distributed across a huge loft. Therefore, sign was crucial to design. In
order to create unity and compactness of megastructure the symbolic form became visually critical
agent of both architectural facade and conventional roadsign with billboard. Freed from architectural
conventions and without any formal theoretical constraints or preexisting form, the Stardust offered
nothing short of spectacular. Its image contained exuberant galactic panorama of the solar system that
exploded beyond the edges of the building. At the signs center sat a plastic earth, ringed by Sputnik,
an image caption from news tabloids. Cosmic rays of neon and electric lights pulsed in all directions
enhancing visual style. Also, sign incorporated not only symbolic images and forms but characteristic
graphic lettering. Plastered across this universe was a jagged galaxy of electric letters spelling out
Stardust. At roadside stood the second freestanding sign; a circle constraining an amorphous cloud of
cosmic dust. The transformed facade,now symbolic messageboard, was visible from long distance and
acted as a spatial compressor at large scale in landscape of high-speeds. Within the Strip the scale was
reduced to roadside block and parking lots where roadside sign was visually sufficient image of
attraction.
At this time at the end of 50s a common formula has been hammered out for the design of
casinos and hotels. Broad and spacious parking space was placed at the front and it not only served as
a comfort, but as a symbolic element of motel. (L. from Las Vegas, Venturi) Building became low,
visually unassuming and recessed from the main access routes. The casinos atrium and main room was
frontally placed and it was the first thing visitor saw when he entered the building. All other functions
from hotel-check-in, restaurants too showrooms were disposed radially, spun off the central casino
atrium.
Circulation levels and spatial level of the highway match the distance between buildings. Along
the Strip, notes Venturi parking lots are not only used to mark prestige, but allow direct access from the
road and regulate physical distances between different casinos. The visual extension and unconstrained
broad views lend to illusion of slow motion. Buildings facade and front levels are possible to survey at
the high speeds. Side view of the complex becomes also important since it is present for longer time in
visual spectrum of the moving traffic that runs along parking lots and parallel to access route of the
casino.
The Stardusts facade was bent in the middle slightly to conform to the building shape
and direction of traffic. The southern half angled back to face northbound traffic. The sign is hoisted
aloft one story on a colonnade of store pillars, similar to Desert Inn. Display windows lined along
arcade replace the storefront and other large billboards announcing other attractions hang on either
side of the sign. The rest of the building , an unassuming two and three story structure reminds us of
big, low industrial warehouses. The height of the building is low due to maintenance system
requirements, such as air-conditioning. It seems that building structure peeks our hesitantly from
behind dominating sign-facade. Architecture is neutral and almost invisible. Interior spaces stand
completely independent and separated from the roadcommercial armature of the Strip. Lacking the
Desert Inns lawn and fountain architectural genealogy of conventional motor inn is lost. The sign in
the front of symbolic parking acts as communication node (agent) between landscape of hi0gh speeds
and unlimited expansion, and private areas (parking space,casino, hotels pool area) where smaller
scale and monumental entry relates to secluded realm of the interior. In the Learning from Las Vegas
Venturi designates, this striking building, Stardust as a decorated shed. It is relatively simple structure
with an elaborate, independent layer of symbolism through which urban space is organized. The
Decorated shed revealed a critical building elements for strips. Architecture is no longer perceived as
a form in urban space, bur rather, as a symbol of that space. The ontological element of these symbols
works as directional communicative instrument. The Stardust took this urban form further that it had
ever been taken before.
Las Vegas achieved a vivid and conceptually strong framework in the time span from early 60s
to the end of 70s. The transformation of roadside architecture into billboard type of facade was
complete.
In the great signs Strip has developed an urban aesthetic that proved both practical and
expressive. They were conceptual or virtual gateways, guiding drivers down the Strip while relaying
the experience of casino resorts over large spaces at high speeds to be discovered inside. As landmarks,
signs gave order to the parking lots, lowrise casinos , motel blocks and the growing number of higrise
hotel towers strung along the highway. They proved to be as important and visually effective as church
spires and City hall domes of more traditional cities. In Times Square this concept found its application
in decorative wallpaper mounted on the existing buildings facades, serving similar symbolic and
commercial function. In Las Vegas sign shaped space and by its own graphic means was able to
communicate at high speed and compress space at different levels.
The Caesar Palace opened to public in August 1966. Caesar faced the Strip with a royal
presence and bulk established its own organization in its own domain. The particular arrangement of
wings marked entry and appeared more Baroque than Roman. The disposition of the complex favored
richness and complexity over accuracy. The roadside motel tradition from early 40s and 50s has
ended with opening of Caesars Resorts. Its complex programs and sumptuous forms of historic
elements on plan introduced Baroque city organization. The focus was on symmetrical wings
reaching out to embrace the limousine cruising-up to the entry. Above stood convex fourteen story
tower. Evolution from motel prototype which was based on loose arrangement of buildings on the site,
to complex schemes of controlling, open vistas invoking monumental order, are completed with
Caesar Palace. It contained space for gambling, restaurants, auditoriums, complete hotel and shopping
mall.
A sumptuous array of styles and a host of marble-white columns establish its theme which is in
spirit close to Roman forum. The arcades of the facade appear to be influenced by Bernini, but scale
and size belong conceptually to postmodern expression. Classical statuary and blue mosaic has
multiple reading and could be associated both with Byzantine style and neoclassicism. The parking lots
are removed from the frontal view to the side and space of the entry zone has resemblance of St. Peter
square. The area itself is elliptical and dotted with embellishing statutes and five fountains. Visual
landscape evokes great processional spaces of summer Villas of Baroque. The eclectic motifs in the
facades are collages of the Etruscian and mature Roman peristyles. The architectural devices were
employed to solve problems never attempted in the whole evolution of Classical architecture,
marveled authors of the Learnings from Las Vegas. The formal elements from architectural past
connote past styles, and in essence, describe eclectic style of postmodern Pop culture. The artists used
enough of the vocabulary of Classicism to make images recognizable, then stretched that vocabulary to
serve a new cultural context. The columns are too large for a temple, but just right for a Las Vegas
sign.
Las Vegas has changed. Caesar Palace gave the strip medium a message by perfecting a
critical element of the Las Vegas style-:theme architecture. Caesar represented the culmination of the
trend to unify the vacationers visit by designing every detail of what they saw and experienced. The
hotels existed as much in memory or fancy as in time and space, and were intended to intensify
experience of a place. The strip became a string of such worlds.
By the time of the Caesars construction, Strip was no longer a random collection of unrelated
buildings. The roadside evolved into rich panorama of architectural symbols referential of the popular
cultural icons. The emerging urban form was organized along a canal of leisurely automotive
transport. Each hotel/casino palace faced common highway across large parking lot. Interspersed
with these large complexes were smaller motels, gas stations, shops. The great signs had been born as
creatures of this landscape to establish an identity and focus of the Strip.
The wanton style of Las Vegass glittery mobster past was replaced by corporate titans who
preferred established style when commissioned new architecture during 1980s.
Enormous theme palaces emerged on the Las Vegas Strip. The balance between signs and architecture
shifted in favor of the architecture as highrise started to dominate skyline. Masses of new visitors
drawn by corporate marketing unexpectedly added pedestrian life to the car-oriented Strip. Density
brought an oddly urban character.
Las Vegas Strip emphasized recreation almost exclusively. It created an entire city district
shaped by the activities and images of entertainment. It was a suburb of the Southern Californian
culture of mass entertainment. By the 1980s the formative spirit of entrepreneurial experiment had
vanished. And yet the commercial vernacular landscape continued to innovate. The denser Strip
produced new opportunities to bring people together and to communicate message.
Strips were never intended to be cities at all. The home of amusement for teenagers, service for
cars and trucks, and restaurants serving travelers, strips originally provided convenient grounds for
the car culture. All these function required large, inexpensive tracts of real estate. The architecture of
the strip was expedient.
It seems that Las Vegas, model for car city exhausted its both commercial and cultural
potentials. The next step in the evolution of urban genealogy would probably be a virtual city based on
collective consciousness of masses and media infused landscapes drawing inspiration from previous
urban memory. Challenges and problems of traffic congestion, water scarcity, and high density are
drawing limits to Strip expansion. But while the strip remain a form of urban experiment, it never
materialised into more than video screen of the national consciousness. Over the years range of themes
of the mini-worlds along the Strip alluded more to cinematic reality than to traditional architecture of
the city. Las Vegas remained on the edge : at the edge of the town and at the edge of culture. The strip
has been the perfect architectural medium for creating a new type of city where more traditional city
could not take root.