Las Vegas: Lost in the Desert 2nd Edition

LOST IN THE DESERT CODYDSTOREY

Rhode Island School of Design Master’s Thesis 2nd Edition

Las Vegas: Lost in the Desert

Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture in the Department of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Cody Dale Storey Rhode Island School of Design Masters’ Examination Committee Approved by:

_____________________________________________________ Thomas Gardner

Professor, Department of Architecture, Primary Advisor

_____________________________________________________ Jason Wood

Professor, Department of Architecture, Secondary Advisor

_____________________________________________________ Jon Knowles

Associate Professor, Department of Architecture

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//03 ABSTRACT

//05 FIELD RESEARCH

//23 PROPAGANDA

//31 ANALYSIS

//45 RESPONSE

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INTRODUCTION

ABSTRACT

The reorganization of the forgotten and the overlooked reveals a world of unexplored spatial possibilities that lay dormant. Simultaneously - paradoxically - there is a hidden poignancy in our culture’s representation of everyday life that is more honest in its deterioration. What becomes the status of materiality and structure? How do we effectively delaminate, reveal, and occupy what we would normally view as derelict space, cultural noise or mundane pop sensibilities?

The use of different personas or lenses can reveal latent possibilities within a common framework. The tourist, environmentalist, resident, employee, casino architect, and the activist are just a few of these lenses. What follows is a series of explorations concerning the city of Las Vegas as viewed from these perspectives.

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LOST IN THE DESERT

FIELD RESEARCH

Various points of view can be explored through the medium of photography.

The following photographic series presents a visual investigation of the various experiential pathways through the city. Beginning as a tourist one can observe and even admire the purposeful veneer that Las Vegas constantly emanates. Peeling back that faรงade, looking beneath, around and behind what is projected yields a useful insight on how and why this city lives.

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JANUARY 20, 2012

THE OASIS AND THE MIRAGE Through the lens of the visitor or outsider, the basic elements of Las Vegas are readily revealed. The first of which is, of course, the desert. The radiating heat immediately envelopes you upon exiting the controlled atmosphere of your aircraft or car. The second lens is the extravagant built forms that glow for miles, outshining the pristine barren landscape. The third element is everything inbetween, an intermediate landscape that negotiates between the built and unbuilt.

This amorphous and blurred zone is easily overlooked and as a result visitors define Las Vegas in simplistic terms. It is between the projected mirage and physical oasis that the potential for discovery exists, an area of research that is likely to build a much more nuanced identity for Las Vegas.

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JANUARY 20, 2012

NEW AND OLD Empty lots and stalled projects are common in Las Vegas. They are unavoidable when walking certain sections of the strip, yet as a tourist it is entirely possible to stay within the casino complex and never see the most blatant evidence of commercial mismanagement. However, through the lens of a potential developer, architect, or resident employee, these areas of the city stand as symbols of a greater problem. These greater issues reach beyond the strip and beyond the sprawling neighborhoods of the city; they are entrenched into the region, the group of cities that share resources with Vegas.

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JANUARY 21, 2012

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN Identifying the personality or character of a city is a fascinating prospect. Some cities are seen as progressive, evolving and ever-changing through reinvention.

These cities, however, are susceptible to disregarding their own history by taking risks with their built environment. Many older cities have become monuments to an earlier version of themselves, as if they were massive museums dedicated to celebrating another time in their own history. In its most extreme form this type of city could be more readily described as the veiled intersection of nostalgia and narcissism.

As a city of citations, Las Vegas wears these borrowed identities like a second skin.

Simultaneously, Vegas is a memorial to itself while having nearly no limits to what it builds next. This young city consistently reinvents the way it uses other identities to identify itself.

Currently Vegas is in a state of adopting the larger architectural high brow. Names such as Foster, Libeskind, Gehry and others now share a city with the themed resorts of the 90’s. The evolution of a city of copies gives rise to the notion of an original collector. A unique condition on a massive scale, the original collector arranges and reinterprets in a way that has not been seen before, making itself a differentiated organism in the process.

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JANUARY 22, 2012

THE AUSTERITY OF VEGAS Las Vegas requires massive amounts of material, energy and support staff. These components have observable and distinct pathways through the city; space is created to facilitate the movement of these elements. With a concentrated inward facing faรงade, such as the strip, an interesting condition can be studied around its perimeter.

Walking the path of a would-be casino employee reveals a parallel strip, an austere dusty tract of land and infrastructure that serves only to feed the attractions of the strip. This service corridor is analogous to one of a Victorian home. This condition exists just a block away from the affluent tourist destinations and like the service corridors of a Victorian home, it is meant to be out of sight of the visitor.

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MARCH 16, 2012

PROPAGANDA

The following sketches were developed in tandem with the photographic essay through the lens of a resident, social activist and graphic designer. After the field research was complete these sketches were reexamined and processed, changing conceptual hands from the tourist, to resident, to social activist, and graphic designer. This personal transformation can be seen here as a series of propaganda posters. These drawings serve as vessels for the thesis, carrying it into the architectural realm. They evoke the notion of a poised, albeit flawed city, an organism at odds with itself. The most optimistic appraisal of these posters indicates that a hope of a future symbiosis could exist, while a more realistic view of these renderings drives toward a much more parasitic present condition.

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Lost in the Desert: Las Vegas Reinterpretation and Propaganda

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APRIL 17, 2012

ANALYSIS

In searching for key elements that make up the city, opportunities to insert a larger public offering become apparent. Through examination and study of the history of Las Vegas, a basic architectural attitude toward expanding free and open public space is extracted. Opportunistic pockets that can house the seeds of a greater public offering begin to materialize. These overlooked spaces are incubators for ideas that serve the city. As these solutions grow and begin to take form they should co-exist within the current state of the city. These offerings also serve to highlight the city, to compliment its extravagant nature while suggesting something new and beneficial in the process.

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APRIL 17, 2012

EXISTING CONDITIONS A simple look into Las Vegas’ urban development displays what a city might need or want as a whole. Las Vegas has experienced a massive expansion since 1908, when it stood as an 800 person outpost between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City.

In just over 100 years it has exploded into the icon we know today.

How did this expansion take place? What was lost or left behind in this accelerated growth? How does this relatively new city relate to its environment, region and humble beginnings?

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Las Vegas Expansion 1908 Poplation [800] - 1940 Poplation [8,422] //034

Reduction of Public Space 1940, 2006 //035

1970

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1980

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Growth Eminating From the Strip //037

APRIL 17, 2012

PROJECTIONS Pushing forward, the research is used as an indicator to identify potential building sites. When identifying opportunistic areas in the city we should not limit ourselves to thin slices of disregarded walkways and medians. A three-dimensional analysis fully mines the city of latent potential. Growth of the architectural ideas then occurs from any available opportunity. These growths are most readily described as projections. In this sense of the word ‘projection’ bears several definitions. Projecting ideas into the future fields certain outcomes and results. To visually or pictorially project these ideas allows for a limited but useful window into a particular set of ideas, the experience of what it might mean to exist in that idea. And the final use of the word ‘projection’ is to say that it is an architectural projection. Architectural projections can give substance and support to the notions and definitions above. These projections permeate and pierce both the sky and ground alike in order to elevate not only the physical spaces but status of the idea.

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Inverted Growth and Densification //040

Projected Elevated Strip //041

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Linkage Residential Strands Community Plates and Sensory Frames Commercial Plates Geothermal and Structural Pylons

Projected Single Tower Axon //042

Projected Elevated Strip Sequence //043

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MAY 10, 2012

RESPONSE

As a container for the research, the architectural projections must differentiate into a much more nuanced form. This begs the question: if Las Vegas were to reference or cite a dense metropolis how would it approach this idea? The tower is a common projection of the metropolis, a dense and efficient collection of ideas.

Las Vegas would inevitably have its own unique take on the idea of the tower and, by extension, the metropolis. The tower in Las Vegas would contain essential functions and sensory experiences, much like the casinos do. However, unlike the casinos, these towers would frame and promote the city and its environment while creating an inward re-densification. Citizens could essentially reoccupy the strip without focusing or visually interacting with it. Abstraction and absurdity are used as tools to reveal the larger issues while simultaneously grounding the thesis research.

“Maupassant often lunched at the restaurant in the tower, though he didn’t care much for the food: It’s the only place in Paris, he used to say, where I don’t have to see it.”

- Roland Barthes, The Eiffel Tower

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Upper Levels Sensory Frame + Thermal Mass //048

Lower Levels Vertical Linkage //049

Sudy Model [Plaster] Surface Area + Thermal Mass //058

Study Model [Plaster + Plexi] Sensory Frame, Thermal Mass + Floor Plate Integration //059

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Works Cited Barthes, Roland. The Eiffel Tower, and Other Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang, 1979.

Print.

Cook, Peter. Archigram. New York: Princeton Architectural, 1999. Print.

Cook, Peter. Drawing: The Motive Force of Architecture. Chichester, England: Wiley, 2008.

Print.

Crompton, Dennis, and Peter Cook. Concerning Archigram--. London: Archigram Archives, 1999. Print.

Droog & Dutch Design. Utrecht: Centraal Museum, 2000. Print.

Futagawa, Yukio, Toyo ItĹ?, and Steven Holl. Steven Holl. Tokyo: A.D.A. Edita, 1993. Print.

Holl, Steven. Edge of a City: Steven Holl. Minneapolis: Center, 1991. Print.

Holl, Steven. Intertwining: Selected Projects, 1989-1995. New York: Princeton Architectural, 1996. Print.

Holl, Steven. Parallax. Basel: Birkhäuser-Publishers for Architecture, 2000. Print.

Nakamura, Toshio. Morphosis Urban Projects. Tokyo: A. + U., 1994. Print.

Rappaport, Nina, Brook Denison, and Nicholas Hanna. Learning in Las Vegas: Charles Atwood/ David M. Schwarz. New Haven, CT: Yale School of Architecture, 2010. Print.

Rattenbury, Kester, and Samantha Hardingham. Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown: Learning from Las Vegas. Abingdon [England: Routledge, 2007. Print.

Turrell, James, and Ursula Sinnreich. James Turrell - Geometrie Des Lichts = Geometry of Light.

Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2009. Print.

Uddin, M. Saleh. Hybrid Drawing Techniques by Contemporary Architects and Designers. New York: John Wiley, 1999. Print.

Venturi, Robert, Brown Denise Scott, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1977. Print.

Woods, Lebbeus. OneFiveFour. NY, NY: Princeton Architectural, 2011. Print.

Woods, Lebbeus. The Storm and the Fall. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2004. Print.

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CODYDSTOREY Lost in the Desert Rhode Island School of Design Masters Thesis 2nd Edition