AESTHETIC OR ANAESTHETIC: The Competing Symbols of Las Vegas Strip

Visible Language, 2003 by Bhatt, Ritu

Within the discipline of architecture Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour see their work to be consistent with emerging areas of inquiry, such as the search for underlying typologies and the larger search for meaning in architecture. They acknowledge the works of Charles Jencks, George Baird and Alan Colquhoun as important influences, particularly, the essays they wrote in Meaning in Architecture, published in 1969. E.H. Gombrich's book, Meditations on a Hobby Horse, is also cited by Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour as an important influence. Gombrich's thesis, that physiognomic forms are ambiguous, and they can only be interpreted within a particular cultural ambience is consistent with Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour's belief that the symbols on the Strip conform to a conventional system of meanings-meanings that are not inherent in the forms themselves.12

However, what is of special interest to them is Colquhoun's interest in the typology of forms and how historical associations from the past become available to a designer's vocabulary. They write:

Alan Colquhoun has written of architecture as part of a "system of communications within society" and describes the anthropological and psychological basis for the use of a typology of forms in design, suggesting that not only are we not "free from the forms of the past, and the availability of these forms, and from the availability of these forms as typological models, but that, if we assume we are free, we have lost control over a very active sector of our imagination and of our power to communicate with others."13

Their primary aim is to rejuvenate this aspect of imaginative thought made dormant by modernist emphasis on functional aesthetics, and to devise a methodology that would allow architects to analyze and evaluate the visibly vital architecture of the Strip. They want to remind architects that "architecture that depends on association in its perception also depends on association in its creation."14 They argue that symbolism is essential to architecture and models from a previous time, or from existing cities, are source materials, and, most importantly, replication is part of the design process. For instance, they write that when designing a window, you start not only with the abstract function of modulating light rays and breezes to serve interior space but with the image of window-of all the windows you know plus others you find out about. This approach, they argue, is symbolically and functionally conventional, but it promotes architecture of meaning, which is broader and richer.

It is the unresolved ambiguity between a belief in underlying architectural typologies and associations that are constant (that repeat themselves from the past) and the Goodmanian search for the Strip's dynamic aesthetic that is open to infinite interpretations that weakens the book's potential to provide a cohesive vision.

Moreover, what is presented in the book are a loose array of photographs, diagrams and notes on the Casino strip meant to evoke the lived experience of the Strip. The techniques of representation are varied and experimental, and it is evident that there is a search for an analytical framework that will do justice to the new emerging environment. Charts offer photographs of all sides of the main casinos and gasoline stations and 93 frames of movie sequence capture movement. Other techniques such as miscellaneous reprints of tourist brochures are also experimented within the book along with a variety of maps. All of these techniques are meant to challenge traditional two-dimensional modes of representation. However, despite the experimental edge of the whole project, a belief in abstraction is evident throughout the text and through the analytical diagrams. For instance, Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour argue that it is a study of method and not content, claiming that the analysis of a drive-in church would match that of a drive-in restaurant. In fact, they believe that analysis of one architectural variable in isolation from the others is a respectable scientific and humanistic activity, so long as it is re-synthesized in design. Most of all, they clarify that they are approaching the problem of symbolism in architecture, from a practitioner's point of view, pragmatically, using concrete examples, rather than abstractly through the science of semiotic or through a priori theorizing.