Once upon a time, when you moved to a new city, you began to assimilate into that city rather rapidly.....whether you wanted to or not. In the past, when a person would leave a city, region, or country behind, they would become completely separated from the places they knew. In a new place, the immigrant would assume more and more qualities of the new home, influenced by the people, culture, and media influences around them. Eventually the newcomer may begin to identify more with the new place than the old. At one time this was the natural process. This process is called assimilation. In the past, assimilation was virtually assured as part of the natural evolution of the individual in a new environment. Today the process of assimilation can become somewhat complicated due to a new phenomenon that is taking place. That phenomenon is called delayed locational disconnect.
Delayed locational disconnect is something that occurs when a new immigrant in a new place has a delayed or completely arrested assimilation due to attachments to the old place which are preserved through the use of online technology. In the past when you left one place for another, you became completely separated from most of the influences of the past locale. Now, thanks to online technology, you have access to all the media and culture that you left behind. This can cause a delayed detachment where you are less influenced by where you are and more influenced by the media and culture from where you left. This causes the individual to have a delayed adoption of the local culture and values.
Sometimes this locational disconnect can work as a disadvantage to the immigrant or it can help shield an individual who might be living in a difficult local environment with reminders of home can make a difficult situation bearable. Individuals might also choose locational disconnect through online resources to remove themselves from a hostile political climate. Take for instance Iranian students who remove themselves from the local media resources so that they have access to a freer and more global range of media. In both cases geography becomes less of a factor and choice becomes a greater factor in determining the values one tends to posses. In the future, technology will play a greater roll in the way we live our lives, erasing borders and boundaries, while solidifying identities based on allegiances other than geography and local culture.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
The continuing influence of Richard Neutra
Neutraface is a family of fonts which was based on the architectural lettering style specified by the late modernist architect Richard Neutra. The ode to Richard Neutra continues in song! Of all the icons of architecture, I bet none has ever had a tribute quite like this!
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Could cities like San Francisco become the new Detroit?
Walking around San Francisco I notice that the landscape is changing. It feels like air being slowly released from a balloon. The energy level is dropping. Storefronts, particularly boutique stores, are closing one by one. And it's not just the new stores either. I was surprised to find one of my favorite bookstores, Abandoned Planet at 518 Valencia, having a last day going out of business sale. Abandoned Planet was an established bookstore that I first noticed 13 years ago in the heart of the Mission District. Ti Couz, my favorite Creperie had a sign in the window, indicating how hard it has been to stay open, how their business is struggling, and how they had to let a good part of their staff go. I fact, it was the first Sunday in memory that I didn't have to wait in line to be seated. Everywhere I look I see businesses empty or having a going out of business sale. Restaurants are reducing their hours. Established businesses that have been operating for years are disappearing. Some shops are selling goods in flea market fashion on sidewalks in a desperate attempt to try to sell their goods.
People aren't buying because jobs have been lost and money is becoming scarce. San Francisco is just too expensive and people are cutting back. It's happening in the sprawl too. Driving in suburban Sacramento last week I counted 32 vacated strip mall storefronts. So maybe it isn't just San Francisco but California as a whole. I watched the same thing happen in Spain as the economy came screeching to a crawl in early 2009. In my adult life I have never seen an economy this bad, yet I keep hearing the cheerleaders of the media celebrating that things are getting better. I have to wonder what exactly are they all smoking? Because from my point of view things keep sliding downwards and that's scary because at my core I'm an optimist.
With all that I am seeing, I have to think that we are on the verge of a secondary crisis. The shoe that is the commercial real estate crisis, has yet to drop. When it does, we might find ourselves in a worse fiasco then we found ourselves in when the residential mortgage crisis hit. But the way I see it is that if people don't have jobs, they don't have money, and if people don't have money they don't shop. And if people don't shop we don't have jobs. And the people that do have jobs are spending less because they are often overextended and are being raked over the coals by an increasingly powerful banking industry which is beginning to attack people with higher fees and interest rates. And so begins the chess game between bankruptcies, corporate book cooking, financial organizations, lobbyists and all their pocketed politicians, trying to find a new level on which to have the upper hand.
And what will happen when storefronts sit vacant and when people choose to stay home for lack of funds? What will happen when services are cut back and crime increases? What will happen when cities like San Francisco, which repelled old school and established families and never attracted new families who could plant roots, become less interesting? What happens when these cities of the creative class which operated like a Ponzi Scheme built on newcomers, becomes boring, loses its appeal and becomes ultimately unsustainable? What happens when a lack of an urban policy guts the cities even further? Could the cities of the creative class, like New York and San Francisco become the new Detroit? The decade that begins with 2010 could be very interesting indeed.
Friday, January 1, 2010
San Luis Potosi, Mexico: Projection Technology and Architecture
Twice a year (at Christmas and Easter) the City of San Luis Potosi, Mexico has a festival of light in which they illuminate several of their oldest cathedrals using the latest in projections technology. The end result is nothing short of spectacular. Viewers are able to see the historic structure in ways that could never have been imagined or intended by the original architects. Using projection technology, the building becomes becomes alive, leaving the viewer completely awestruck. This was my first introduction to the use of projection technology on architecture.
The use of this technology will become increasingly commonplace in our cities in the near future. There is a great civic importance to this type of technology in our cities. The spectacle can be adapted to any type of celebration or cultural programing which will bring people into the streets at all hours of the night for entertainment purposes. That in turn makes cities safer in the evening and spreads some much needed cash to small businesses nearest to the spectacle. For all its civic implications, this type of technology will have an even larger impact in the world of corporate advertising.
Advertising will begin to take on a “Blade Runner” type quality and completely change the playing field on what types of adverting are and are not acceptable in an urban environment. New norms will be created and laws will have to adapt to the changing technology of advertising. At the end of this process more and more cities will look like Las Vegas and Hong Kong spliced with the urban environments of “Blade Runner” and “AI”. Most cities in the United States will naturally be more prone to regulation whereas many of the most dynamic cities in Mexico will be completely transformed. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out.
For footage on the Festival of Light in San Luis Potosi or for footage of advertising using projection technology; Click on the links below to see viewer contributed video footage on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyXl6EpSkbU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn1AKwswN0E&feature=related
The use of this technology will become increasingly commonplace in our cities in the near future. There is a great civic importance to this type of technology in our cities. The spectacle can be adapted to any type of celebration or cultural programing which will bring people into the streets at all hours of the night for entertainment purposes. That in turn makes cities safer in the evening and spreads some much needed cash to small businesses nearest to the spectacle. For all its civic implications, this type of technology will have an even larger impact in the world of corporate advertising.
Advertising will begin to take on a “Blade Runner” type quality and completely change the playing field on what types of adverting are and are not acceptable in an urban environment. New norms will be created and laws will have to adapt to the changing technology of advertising. At the end of this process more and more cities will look like Las Vegas and Hong Kong spliced with the urban environments of “Blade Runner” and “AI”. Most cities in the United States will naturally be more prone to regulation whereas many of the most dynamic cities in Mexico will be completely transformed. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out.
For footage on the Festival of Light in San Luis Potosi or for footage of advertising using projection technology; Click on the links below to see viewer contributed video footage on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyXl6EpSkbU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn1AKwswN0E&feature=related
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
The Challenge of Tejano Island
The Rio Grande Valley of Texas is anchored by several cities. To the west it is anchored by McAllen and to the a southeast by Brownsville. Each city has a distinct character and many strengths and weaknesses. The region, being many things, is unique. It is the southern most part of the mainland continental United States. It is almost tropical in nature. It shares much in common with Mexico to the south yet it is still a part of the United States. In reality it isn't really either country it's more like a third country, an island of sorts.........Tejano Isand.
Separated by a 120 mile wide sea of privately owned ranch land to the north, an ocean to the east and an international border to the south and west, the Rio Grande Valley is isolated from the radically different worlds around it. So isolated that the RGV is the only metropolitan region in the United States not connected to other United State cities by a federal interstate. Closer to Mexico City than Dallas, the region while American, is overshadowed culturally by its neighbors to the south, the metropolitan areas of Matamoros and Reynosa being the more dominant cities.
Media and culture are highly influenced by Mexico but the RGV hasn't really been influenced by the social changes that have taken place in Mexico. Nor are they immediately impacted by social changes in the United States. The region, particularly Brownsville is caught in a negative feed back loop. With minimal outside influences, the region seems to be lost in time and ghettoized from both countries. This ghettoization is exploited by the local political and economic elite, many of which are from original land grant families that have controlled the region for generations.
In a region where poverty is the norm and not the exception, exploitation is an accepted reality. This type of system is perpetuated by a deeply held philosophy of fatalism which is shared by a great many of the Valley's inhabitants. Partially born from deep Latin Catholic roots as well as generational poverty, fatalism is another defining characteristic of this region. A similar reaction has developed in New Orleans; another island type city.
In both locales the commonly held belief of the people is that life is hard and most are destined to failure. People accept their situation...with much commiseration, but rarely do much to fight the power structure and improve the overall situation for society as a whole. Without outside influences this line of thinking may seem rational. Where these cities differ is in their response to their fatalistic beliefs. New Orleans will New Orleans differs is in their response to fatalism. New Orleans will party whereas Brownsville and the rest of the RGV will wallow in suffering.
It is these types of differences that repel outside influences. Particularly in Brownsville this has been true. Whereas McAllen has attracted more growth, primarily because of its close relationship to Monterrey, Mexico, the overall growth that has taken place in Brownsville has not been sustainable. Brownsville lags behind in all areas which would attract the more well off and higher quality investments. This in turn create another negative feedback loop that attracts low quality industries and the poor, which in turn sets off another negative feed back loop of social degeneration.
The Rio Grande Valley faces colossal challenges which are regional in scale. The entire region will need to learn to work together in the future in order to overcome these challenges. The region will need to better balance their cultural relationships with both the north and the south or risk becoming alien to both. If it doesn't learn to work together and to balance its interests, it will tear itself apart. Without balance and collaboration the social differences that exist between people and cities will be magnified and the whole region will eventually be trapped in a vortex of social and economic decline that it is unlikely to escape.
Separated by a 120 mile wide sea of privately owned ranch land to the north, an ocean to the east and an international border to the south and west, the Rio Grande Valley is isolated from the radically different worlds around it. So isolated that the RGV is the only metropolitan region in the United States not connected to other United State cities by a federal interstate. Closer to Mexico City than Dallas, the region while American, is overshadowed culturally by its neighbors to the south, the metropolitan areas of Matamoros and Reynosa being the more dominant cities.
Media and culture are highly influenced by Mexico but the RGV hasn't really been influenced by the social changes that have taken place in Mexico. Nor are they immediately impacted by social changes in the United States. The region, particularly Brownsville is caught in a negative feed back loop. With minimal outside influences, the region seems to be lost in time and ghettoized from both countries. This ghettoization is exploited by the local political and economic elite, many of which are from original land grant families that have controlled the region for generations.
In a region where poverty is the norm and not the exception, exploitation is an accepted reality. This type of system is perpetuated by a deeply held philosophy of fatalism which is shared by a great many of the Valley's inhabitants. Partially born from deep Latin Catholic roots as well as generational poverty, fatalism is another defining characteristic of this region. A similar reaction has developed in New Orleans; another island type city.
In both locales the commonly held belief of the people is that life is hard and most are destined to failure. People accept their situation...with much commiseration, but rarely do much to fight the power structure and improve the overall situation for society as a whole. Without outside influences this line of thinking may seem rational. Where these cities differ is in their response to their fatalistic beliefs. New Orleans will New Orleans differs is in their response to fatalism. New Orleans will party whereas Brownsville and the rest of the RGV will wallow in suffering.
It is these types of differences that repel outside influences. Particularly in Brownsville this has been true. Whereas McAllen has attracted more growth, primarily because of its close relationship to Monterrey, Mexico, the overall growth that has taken place in Brownsville has not been sustainable. Brownsville lags behind in all areas which would attract the more well off and higher quality investments. This in turn create another negative feedback loop that attracts low quality industries and the poor, which in turn sets off another negative feed back loop of social degeneration.
The Rio Grande Valley faces colossal challenges which are regional in scale. The entire region will need to learn to work together in the future in order to overcome these challenges. The region will need to better balance their cultural relationships with both the north and the south or risk becoming alien to both. If it doesn't learn to work together and to balance its interests, it will tear itself apart. Without balance and collaboration the social differences that exist between people and cities will be magnified and the whole region will eventually be trapped in a vortex of social and economic decline that it is unlikely to escape.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Sacramento is Planning for Big Changes at the K Street Mall. But do Those Changes go Far Enough?
A recent study commissioned jointly by the City of Sacramento and the Downtown Sacramento Partnership determined that the heart of Sacramento's Downtown retail district was generating only 40 percent of its potential $694 million dollars in annual revenue. The Signature piece of the Downtown retail district consists of a large and partially enclosed 1980's mall that shares more in common with it's suburban counterparts than an actual urban environment and an open air pedestrian mall which is closed to all motorized traffic.
The open air mall spans K St. between 13th and 7th Streets. It stringed for most of its length with light rail tracks that run through the center of the pedestrian only street. K Street's defining characteristics are that of buildings in various states of decline, abandoned businesses, struggling businesses of mostly low quality, and a few newer businesses devoted to either office, retail, restaurant, or entertainment functions. Just as noticeable are the large populations of homeless, destitute, and indigent people, who are often aggressively panhandling or just hanging out.
The open air mall was constructed in the early 1970's as an urban revitalization project in which public streets were closed in order to create a more suburban like shopping experience. This type of project was very common during the late 1960's and 1970's and Sacramento's new project not unlike all the other like projects across North America, saw a slow and steady decline in viable businesses. As local businesses faltered, the area fell into decline. Whereas many cities with similar experiences reopened their pedestrian malls to traffic Sacramento went another common route, attracting a large urban mall in the 1980's and bringing a light rail line though the middle of the pedestrianized K Street, neither of which was the holy grail of redevelopment success for Sacramento. Fast forward to 2009 and the entire area is in sadder shape than ever, slowly dying with a bad reputation that repels tax dollars rather than attracts. It's no wonder that the Downtown retail core is flat lining far below it's predicted potential. The City of Sacramento however, once again, has a plan.
In an effort being pushed by Mayor Kevin Johnson, city officials are looking into reopening K Street Mall to allow cars, traveling at lower speeds, on some of the blocks on K Street between 8th and 12th streets, in order to see what positive impacts this change would have on area businesses. Most businesses are receptive to this plan with one exception; the owners of the Downtown Plaza / Westfield Mall. Reopening this section of K Street to traffic would require major overhauls of the buildings in which Westfield owns, something that at this time they seem unwilling to do. However according to Mayor Johnson, Westfield has expressed interest in selling the property, something that might make it easier to make the idea of opening K Street a reality. Opening K Street to traffic again is a great idea, one in which Mayor Johnson will find much support, but his idea doesn't go far enough.
In order to improve the dismal conditions of the K Street mall the City of Sacramento needs to do the following.
The open air mall spans K St. between 13th and 7th Streets. It stringed for most of its length with light rail tracks that run through the center of the pedestrian only street. K Street's defining characteristics are that of buildings in various states of decline, abandoned businesses, struggling businesses of mostly low quality, and a few newer businesses devoted to either office, retail, restaurant, or entertainment functions. Just as noticeable are the large populations of homeless, destitute, and indigent people, who are often aggressively panhandling or just hanging out.
The open air mall was constructed in the early 1970's as an urban revitalization project in which public streets were closed in order to create a more suburban like shopping experience. This type of project was very common during the late 1960's and 1970's and Sacramento's new project not unlike all the other like projects across North America, saw a slow and steady decline in viable businesses. As local businesses faltered, the area fell into decline. Whereas many cities with similar experiences reopened their pedestrian malls to traffic Sacramento went another common route, attracting a large urban mall in the 1980's and bringing a light rail line though the middle of the pedestrianized K Street, neither of which was the holy grail of redevelopment success for Sacramento. Fast forward to 2009 and the entire area is in sadder shape than ever, slowly dying with a bad reputation that repels tax dollars rather than attracts. It's no wonder that the Downtown retail core is flat lining far below it's predicted potential. The City of Sacramento however, once again, has a plan.
In an effort being pushed by Mayor Kevin Johnson, city officials are looking into reopening K Street Mall to allow cars, traveling at lower speeds, on some of the blocks on K Street between 8th and 12th streets, in order to see what positive impacts this change would have on area businesses. Most businesses are receptive to this plan with one exception; the owners of the Downtown Plaza / Westfield Mall. Reopening this section of K Street to traffic would require major overhauls of the buildings in which Westfield owns, something that at this time they seem unwilling to do. However according to Mayor Johnson, Westfield has expressed interest in selling the property, something that might make it easier to make the idea of opening K Street a reality. Opening K Street to traffic again is a great idea, one in which Mayor Johnson will find much support, but his idea doesn't go far enough.
In order to improve the dismal conditions of the K Street mall the City of Sacramento needs to do the following.
- Underground the light rail tracks through K Street.
- Open the surface of K Street to two-way vehicular traffic and allow curbside parking where possible.
- Improve the pedestrian environment.
Convert the Downtown Plaza / Westfield Mall to high density mixed-use retail and residential similar to what was done in Pasadena at the Paseo Colorado Shopping Center infill project.- Underground the I-5 Freeway through Downtown Sacramento and seamlessly connect the Old Sacramento riverfront with the core of Downtown's retail shopping district.
Close and relocate all SRO (Single Room Occupancy) Motels.- Push for the construction of high density residential / mixed use projects throughout the core of the City.
- Build several key parking garages with ground floor retail and upper floor office.
- Waive the minimum parking requirements in the Downtown core so long as parking garages are constructed and are designed to blend in seamlessly in the urban environment.
The closing off of traffic on major streets has resulted in the death of many commercial districts across North America. Allowing traffic on streets lets potential shoppers to get to know their options. Improving the pedestrian environment still allows people to explore stores on foot in a pleasant environment while undergrounding the light rail brings back human scale to the streetscape, allowing pedestrians to feel safer. Allowing two-way streets slows traffic down, prevents people from using city streets as a freeway and allows people more options when navigating the city by car. Allowing on street parking alleviates some of the problems caused by not enough available parking spaces while providing a safe buffer between pedestrian or sidewalk diner from the cars traveling on the street. The construction of high density residential projects bring more people into the core at all times of day while the closure of the SRO hotels will help shut down substandard housing and allow for the construction of more adequate housing at higher densities more designed for the urban environment. Constructing more parking garages will allow more people to visit Downtown businesses while allowing more parking options for new Downtown residents. Finally, the reconnection of the Old Sacramento / Riverfront districts will allow for safe and easy passage for tourists and locals alike between destinations along every portion of K Street.
These improvements, if completed would spark even greater interest and development in Sacramento, greatly improvements a sad situation and helping to created a more stable and sustainable prosperity for all.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
The Lessons of Las Vegas Still Hold Surprises
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
Published: December 22, 2009 in the New York Times
NEW HAVEN — When Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown boarded a plane bound for Las Vegas in 1968 with a dozen of their Yale architecture students in tow, there were no multimillion-dollar water shows or pirate ships waiting for them. There were no van Goghs in the hotel galleries. Nor could residents of the city live in tilting condo towers designed by Helmut Jahn and shop in a mall by Daniel Libeskind. Whatever glamour Las Vegas had was all veneer.
The architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown on a 1968 field trip to Las Vegas. Their explorations led them to an important book and a rethinking of vernacular architecture.
Mr. Venturi and Ms. Scott Brown, who had just married and would soon be business partners, were on a search for a way out of the dead end of postwar Modernism, whose early hopes had by then deteriorated into a dreary functionalism. The book they produced four years later, “Learning From Las Vegas,” was one of the last of the big architectural manifestos and a heartfelt embrace of American popular culture that would be hard to imagine anyone attempting today.
“What We Learned: The Yale Las Vegas Studio and the Work of Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates,” which is on view at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery through Feb. 5, looks at the extensive research the architects did in Las Vegas, though it doesn’t place the results in a context that would allow you to reevaluate the impact the project had on a profession starved for a new way forward. Nor do you get a feel for the place Las Vegas held in the popular imagination four years after Tom Wolfe celebrated the city’s “incredible electric sign gauntlet” in Esquire in 1964.
Still, it is a must-see for those who want to recapture momentarily the euphoric sense of discovery that came out of those early trips, as well as get a refresher course on their conclusions, which still have things to teach us.
The show includes roughly 100 photographs taken of Las Vegas, beginning with that first trip. A particularly sweet one shows Ms. Scott Brown with her feet firmly planted in the Nevada desert, her hands fixed on her hips and a defiant smile. Just beyond her is the Strip: a string of flimsy signs, isolated hotels and half-empty parking lots.
The two seem light years away from the architectural establishment back East, which was composed of academic types who once worshiped at the feet of Walter Gropius at Harvard, Mies van der Rohe in Chicago and Philip Johnson at the Museum of Modern Art. And the Strip suggests an alternate future unburdened by the weight of history. It is also a rejection of the strain of rationalism that runs back through Modern architecture to Haussmann’s Paris and the Renaissance.
Mr. Venturi and Ms. Scott Brown approached this world through the car windshield, like the British architectural critic and historian Reyner Banham — who wrote about Los Angeles around the same time — but their method was more analytical than historical. Los Angeles, they say in a short video made for the show, was not a “pure” enough distillation of what they were after: a philosophy of design that reflected the speed and messiness of life as it was coming to be lived. They wanted something “more concentrated and easier to study.”
A small drawing finds that kind of concentration, for example, in the organization of the typical casino sign, with the logo, surrounded by twinkling lights, located at the top so it can be seen from anywhere on the Strip. More detailed information is placed on a smaller sign lower down, so it can be read as the car approaches the parking lot entry.
Photographs of other signs speak to the impermanence of the life of the Strip: a campaign poster hanging off the side of a rusty pickup by the side of the road, the word “BIBLE” painted in capital letters on a horse trailer. The actual buildings, by comparison, look banal — like afterthoughts. The single white hotel tower of the Dunes casino, for example, seems a pathetic testament to a Modernism that has run its full course.
Such observations of real-world design are coupled with a detailed analysis of the urban fabric. A series of small photos, lined up to show the view from a car window along the entire length of the Strip, is inspired by a similar project about the Sunset Strip by the Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha. In both, you get an overwhelming feeling of drift — a result of the horizontal rhythm of empty lots and cheap, low structures.
And the team also used more traditional analytical tools, like the 18th-century Nolli technique that maps out the elaborate pattern of solids and voids — the dense activity of the casinos and the emptiness of the parking lots, for example — that gave the Strip its unique character. Out of it, they hoped to create an architecture that reflected the conflicting needs and desires of normal people rather than one that conformed to rigid aesthetic rules.
Other parts of the show bounce around among the highlights of Mr. Venturi and Ms. Scott Brown’s architectural careers, including work completed before their Las Vegas trips. There is a poignant model of the Vanna Venturi House, which Mr. Venturi designed for his mother in the early ’60s and established him as both an architectural rebel and an original talent. A blend of Modernist and traditional vernacular references, it was a powerful reassertion of architecture’s symbolic function.
There’s also a personal favorite of mine: a wonderfully sinister design from 1988 for Euro Disney, never built, that shows cutout billboards of menacing-looking cartoon characters lined up on both sides of a seemingly endless roadway. It’s an image that blends fantasies about the open road with nightmares about the infantilization of American culture.
An aura of nostalgia pervades the show. Ms. Scott Brown is in her 70s, and Mr. Venturi will be 85 in June, and you feel that they are approaching the end of a long and rich joint career. The world, too, has moved on. The group of architects that dominate the profession today — many of whom were inspired by Mr. Venturi and Ms. Scott Brown’s work — are more interested in exploring architecture’s potential as a three-dimensional spatial experience than in its symbolic value. Some have even begun to mine late Modernism for new ideas about resisting the commercialization of public space.
What they have not found an answer for — and what Mr. Venturi and Ms. Scott Brown were remarkably attuned to — is the accelerating pace of contemporary society. When “Learning From Las Vegas” was published, we were all still getting used to a world of freeways and McDonald’s drive-throughs. Today commercial culture is more powerful and pervasive than ever. Las Vegas has become congested with high-end hospitality-and-retail malls, and urban fantasies just as outrageous, or more so, can be found all over the Middle East. China builds at a pace and on a scale that make postwar America seem quaint by comparison.
We may need these two architects as much now as ever.
“What We Learned” continues through Feb. 5 at the Yale University School of Architecture Gallery, corner of York and Chapel Streets, New Haven; www.architecture.yale.edu; holiday hours: (203) 432-2292.
Published: December 22, 2009 in the New York Times
NEW HAVEN — When Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown boarded a plane bound for Las Vegas in 1968 with a dozen of their Yale architecture students in tow, there were no multimillion-dollar water shows or pirate ships waiting for them. There were no van Goghs in the hotel galleries. Nor could residents of the city live in tilting condo towers designed by Helmut Jahn and shop in a mall by Daniel Libeskind. Whatever glamour Las Vegas had was all veneer.
The architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown on a 1968 field trip to Las Vegas. Their explorations led them to an important book and a rethinking of vernacular architecture.
Mr. Venturi and Ms. Scott Brown, who had just married and would soon be business partners, were on a search for a way out of the dead end of postwar Modernism, whose early hopes had by then deteriorated into a dreary functionalism. The book they produced four years later, “Learning From Las Vegas,” was one of the last of the big architectural manifestos and a heartfelt embrace of American popular culture that would be hard to imagine anyone attempting today.
“What We Learned: The Yale Las Vegas Studio and the Work of Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates,” which is on view at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery through Feb. 5, looks at the extensive research the architects did in Las Vegas, though it doesn’t place the results in a context that would allow you to reevaluate the impact the project had on a profession starved for a new way forward. Nor do you get a feel for the place Las Vegas held in the popular imagination four years after Tom Wolfe celebrated the city’s “incredible electric sign gauntlet” in Esquire in 1964.
Still, it is a must-see for those who want to recapture momentarily the euphoric sense of discovery that came out of those early trips, as well as get a refresher course on their conclusions, which still have things to teach us.
The show includes roughly 100 photographs taken of Las Vegas, beginning with that first trip. A particularly sweet one shows Ms. Scott Brown with her feet firmly planted in the Nevada desert, her hands fixed on her hips and a defiant smile. Just beyond her is the Strip: a string of flimsy signs, isolated hotels and half-empty parking lots.
The two seem light years away from the architectural establishment back East, which was composed of academic types who once worshiped at the feet of Walter Gropius at Harvard, Mies van der Rohe in Chicago and Philip Johnson at the Museum of Modern Art. And the Strip suggests an alternate future unburdened by the weight of history. It is also a rejection of the strain of rationalism that runs back through Modern architecture to Haussmann’s Paris and the Renaissance.
Mr. Venturi and Ms. Scott Brown approached this world through the car windshield, like the British architectural critic and historian Reyner Banham — who wrote about Los Angeles around the same time — but their method was more analytical than historical. Los Angeles, they say in a short video made for the show, was not a “pure” enough distillation of what they were after: a philosophy of design that reflected the speed and messiness of life as it was coming to be lived. They wanted something “more concentrated and easier to study.”
A small drawing finds that kind of concentration, for example, in the organization of the typical casino sign, with the logo, surrounded by twinkling lights, located at the top so it can be seen from anywhere on the Strip. More detailed information is placed on a smaller sign lower down, so it can be read as the car approaches the parking lot entry.
Photographs of other signs speak to the impermanence of the life of the Strip: a campaign poster hanging off the side of a rusty pickup by the side of the road, the word “BIBLE” painted in capital letters on a horse trailer. The actual buildings, by comparison, look banal — like afterthoughts. The single white hotel tower of the Dunes casino, for example, seems a pathetic testament to a Modernism that has run its full course.
Such observations of real-world design are coupled with a detailed analysis of the urban fabric. A series of small photos, lined up to show the view from a car window along the entire length of the Strip, is inspired by a similar project about the Sunset Strip by the Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha. In both, you get an overwhelming feeling of drift — a result of the horizontal rhythm of empty lots and cheap, low structures.
And the team also used more traditional analytical tools, like the 18th-century Nolli technique that maps out the elaborate pattern of solids and voids — the dense activity of the casinos and the emptiness of the parking lots, for example — that gave the Strip its unique character. Out of it, they hoped to create an architecture that reflected the conflicting needs and desires of normal people rather than one that conformed to rigid aesthetic rules.
Other parts of the show bounce around among the highlights of Mr. Venturi and Ms. Scott Brown’s architectural careers, including work completed before their Las Vegas trips. There is a poignant model of the Vanna Venturi House, which Mr. Venturi designed for his mother in the early ’60s and established him as both an architectural rebel and an original talent. A blend of Modernist and traditional vernacular references, it was a powerful reassertion of architecture’s symbolic function.
There’s also a personal favorite of mine: a wonderfully sinister design from 1988 for Euro Disney, never built, that shows cutout billboards of menacing-looking cartoon characters lined up on both sides of a seemingly endless roadway. It’s an image that blends fantasies about the open road with nightmares about the infantilization of American culture.
An aura of nostalgia pervades the show. Ms. Scott Brown is in her 70s, and Mr. Venturi will be 85 in June, and you feel that they are approaching the end of a long and rich joint career. The world, too, has moved on. The group of architects that dominate the profession today — many of whom were inspired by Mr. Venturi and Ms. Scott Brown’s work — are more interested in exploring architecture’s potential as a three-dimensional spatial experience than in its symbolic value. Some have even begun to mine late Modernism for new ideas about resisting the commercialization of public space.
What they have not found an answer for — and what Mr. Venturi and Ms. Scott Brown were remarkably attuned to — is the accelerating pace of contemporary society. When “Learning From Las Vegas” was published, we were all still getting used to a world of freeways and McDonald’s drive-throughs. Today commercial culture is more powerful and pervasive than ever. Las Vegas has become congested with high-end hospitality-and-retail malls, and urban fantasies just as outrageous, or more so, can be found all over the Middle East. China builds at a pace and on a scale that make postwar America seem quaint by comparison.
We may need these two architects as much now as ever.
“What We Learned” continues through Feb. 5 at the Yale University School of Architecture Gallery, corner of York and Chapel Streets, New Haven; www.architecture.yale.edu; holiday hours: (203) 432-2292.
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