Learning from Las Vegas - Revised Edition《Venturi, Pre and Post》

Book review on

Learning from Las Vegas:

The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form

By Robert Venturi Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour

ISBN 0-262-72006

The MIT Press

The modern movement in architecture overthrew the Beaux-Arts style not only because of the revolutionary architects lead by Le Corbusier Walter Gropius but also by pioneers of many other areas in art such as Cubism in painting Art Deco in industrial design it was an inevitable progression.

Architecture in that big history background was heavily influenced by the industrial world that was when the proletarian functionalism and bourgeoisie "ornamentalism" collided the working class couldn't afford all those flamboyant ornaments it was seen as a bad taste in the reformists’ eyes the political correctness at that time was to abandon all the ornaments because it was not readable by working class through that modern architects revolutionized the whole vocabulary of architecture to be more suitable and approachable by common people.

Le Corbusier expressed an admiration of American engineers for their scientific and exact calculated designs advocated the idea of combining architecture with industrial machines[1] thus the machine for living. His idea of Ville Radieuse is the utopian communism idea in the architectural context.

The sympathy towards the working class created modern architecture and urban planning it is economic firm and "delightful" as most modern architects see it.

However Venturi saw the modern architects trying to twist that definition into "economicness and firmness IS delight".[2]

Modernists refuse and condemn any symbols in the architecture let alone any signs. It is clean and geometrically straightforward.

Venturi challenged the modernist thinking that symbol (ornament) is crime; he reckoned it was more symbolic than functional it was symbolically functional. It represented function more than resulted from function. It looked functional more than worked functionally.

The art in architecture was to come from the expression of original functional forms rather than from the meaning of familiar decorative symbols. But when architects demoted the aesthetic element of the Vitrurian trio to an incidental by-product they made of their work fragile tours de force built on shaky theoretical bases.[3]

Architecture is complex and contradictory when modernists eschewed formal classical vocabularies and applied their own language to the complex and unpredictable reality they became subject to the dangers of unconscious formalism. They twisted the whole building into one big ornament by articulation of structural exhibitionism and spatial expressionism which is quite ironic and irresponsible.[4]

What Venturi found in Las Vegas is a way to save our architects from the deterioration sterility and by all means a dead end of modern architecture to inject new blood to our architects’ bodies. What he suggested is to look at the commercial vernacular the folk art especially in the Las Vegas strip the Route 66 with its huge signs in the same manner those early modern architecture explorers did to the industrial vernacular.

The book I have is the revised second edition of Learning from Las Vegas with an added subtitle-The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. It was well stated in the preface of the revised edition that Las Vegas is not the subject in this book but the symbolism of architecture is.

The whole strip is built based on complex signal systems not architecture the language of the big signs and the symbolic forms of casinos implied commercial necessity. It was a result from fierce but healthy competitions of the market rather than from a brilliant architect’s ingenious plan. Hence the system worked more efficiently and organically.

The symbols and signals function more than buildings in this context Venturi promoted the idea that the signal IN the design of a building is surpassed by signal simply ON a building.[5]

The existence of architecture is to convey information it should carry a hell lot of information: like Gothic cathedrals using their large stained glass as an effective propaganda tool let people visualize the stories in Bible etc; the frescos in palaces and manors often tell the story of gods they were ancient comic books; the pediments in classical world often showed the people’s understanding of gods; the same thing happened to traditional Chinese architecture as the whole structure is in timber they have the space beneath trusses and between columns filled with beautifully carved wood often have folk stories on it.

Thus architecture became the place of narrative. Venturi argued that it was better using old cliché to convey or express new meanings rather than inventing something which nobody understood even the creator him/herself. Good rather than original. It is a point which some of the later post-modernist deliberately misinterpreted. Learn from Las Vegas learn from Rome became take anything from Rome without understanding of its very own context. The core of his theory to my understanding is that post-modernism should not be a fixed style in order not to fall into its own formalism it should be eclectic and pluralist a continuing effort should be made to patch the holes for what modernists did not achieve.

It is rather a spirit of ongoing innovation it corresponded with Le Corbusier’s statement that architecture has no relationships with styles[6] he taught architects not to think about styles but to understand people’s needs and with that in mind to work with context.

History is not linear it is spiral in a sense[7]. When it stops moving forward people will push it when it goes a step too far we need to stop look backward and think. The conflicts between exuberance and sobriety will not end but the aim that architecture is for people remains constant and the spirit of innovation shall pass from generation to generation.

Bibliography

Vers Une Architecture Le Corbusier

Functionalism Yes But Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

Lecture by Venturi in Tsinghua University China 2000

Macro-history Renyu Huang

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] P28 Vers Une Architecture Le Corbusier

[2] Functionalism Yes But Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

[3] Functionalism Yes But Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

[4] Functionalism Yes But Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

[5] Lecture by Venturi in Tsinghua University 2000

[6] Vers Une Architecture Le Corbusier

[7] Macro-history Renyu Huang