25 March 2024
Text cited:
Venturi, Robert, et al. Learning from Las Vegas : The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Rev. ed. MIT Press 1977.
Originally published 1972
Description:
Learning from Las Vegas is an architectural critique of Modernist ideologies prevalent in the mid 20th century, chiefly the rule of “form follows function” which dictates that the shape of a building should follow its intended purpose. Through an analysis of the Las Vegas strip, the book proposes an alternative method for understanding architecture based on signs and symbols such as those found in the commercial architecture of the car-based American West. These signs and symbols communicate in direct ways that often have nothing to do with a building’s functional purpose. Think of any large commercial sign for a suburban grocery store or strip mall, particularly one that stands in a parking lot, detached from the building. The example of the Las Vegas strip - a sequence of themed casinos fronted by parking lots and lined by enormous illuminated colorful signs - is uniquely suited to the authors’ ideas and its populist commercialist aspect adds further weight to their anti-establishment arguments. The authors use text, photographs and drawings to analyze Las Vegas’ “casino vernacular,” legitimizing it through numerous comparisons to Renaissance palazzi and Gothic cathedrals, buildings that used applied signs and symbols in similar ways even if the graphics or type fonts were different. This book has been an important voice in dethroning the hegemony of functional architecture and is notable for celebrating populist commercial architecture. Additionally, this book was fundamental in the creation of Post-Modernist Architecture, a movement infamously known for using stylistic quips (“signs”) from period styles as part of its vocabulary.
How does this text relate to scenography?
This book is useful to theatrical designers for its discussion of visual systems and the human experience, particularly those created by symbols, signs, space and light. Understanding the ways motorists, pedestrians and gamblers interact with their specific environments raises questions about the various types of “signs” we may use on stage with audiences - particularly since those environments, such as a gambling room, are often a mirror of the stage. There is an important section in the book which discusses “connotative” versus “denotative” systems of communication. This, by extension, asks stage designers to consider such ideas in their own work and the theatrical experience. When do we show and when do we tell? What is the difference?
This book is also relevant to theatrical design in terms of the explicit “scenery” found on the Las Vegas strip and within casinos. Think of the Roman columns representing Caesar’s Palace or the Googie architecture of the Stardust Lounge. Theatrical designers have always enjoyed great freedom using period styles and ornamentation in their work, whether it be in naturalistic, realistic or non-realistic ways. They have not been subject to the same severe dogma or debates that have held sway in architectural circles and criticism. Certainly, “functional” theatrical design - that is non-representational theatrical design - does exist, even those practitioners feel free to choose from a toolkit of signs and symbols on occasion to make certain points. (If you are familiar with the “duck/decorated shed” category laid out in this text, most set designs are happily a “decorated shed.) If anything, Learning from Las Vegas makes the field of theatrical design seem liberated and fun.
One aspect of this book that is particularly relevant is an analysis of artificial and natural light within the themed experience. At one point, the authors stress that the electrified signs of the strip “twinkle rather than glow.” The following paragraph is striking for its description of the way light in a casino can be used to manipulate time and space:
The gambling room is always very dark; the patio, always very bright. But both are enclosed: The former has no windows, and the latter is open only to the sky. The combination of darkness and enclosure of the gambling room and its subspaces makes for privacy, protection, concentration, and control. The intricate maze under the low ceiling never connects with outside light or outside space. This disorients the occupant in space and time. One loses track of where one is and when it is. Time is limitless, because the light of noon and midnight are exactly the same. Space is limitless, because the artificial light obscures rather than defines its boundaries. Light is not used to define space. Walls and ceilings do not serve as reflective surfaces for light but are made absorbent and dark. Space is enclosed but limitless, because its edges are dark. Light sources, chandeliers, and the glowing, jukebox-like gambling machines themselves are independent of walls and ceilings. the lighting is antiarchitectural. Illuminated baldacchini, more than in all Rome, hover over tables in the limitless shadowy restaurant at the Sahara Hotel. (49)
The authors of this paragraph could just as well as talking about theater and theatrical light, which similarly reveals, conceals and skillfully disorients. I can imagine using this paragraph for discussion with theatrical design students, and particularly those studying lighting design.