Venturi R., Brown D. S., Aizenur S.
Lessons from Las Vegas: Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form /
Per. from English - M.: Strelka Press, 2015.-- 212 p.
ISBN 978-5-906264-36-7
Translated from English by Ivan Tretyakov
Editor Sergey Sitar
Historical and Other Precedents: Forward to the Architecture of the Past.
Historical symbolism and architecture of modernism
The forms of modernist architecture were created by architects and analyzed by critics primarily from the point of view of their perceptive properties - to the detriment of their symbolic meanings arising from association. To the extent that modernists are still forced to recognize the systems of symbols that permeate our environment, they prefer to talk about the devaluation of these symbols. But although modernist architects have almost forgotten about it, there was still a historical precedent for symbolically oriented architecture, and the intricate questions of iconography still play an important role in the field of art history. The early modernists disdained architectural reminiscences. They rejected eclecticism and style as part of the architectural profession - just like any form of historicism that threatened to undermine the pathos of revolution's superiority over evolution in their architecture, based almost exclusively on new technologies. The second generation of modernist architects recognized only the "organizing elements" of history, as Siegfried Gideon put it, who reduced the significance of the historic building and the adjacent piazza to pure form and space enveloped in light. This excessive fascination with space as a purely architectural phenomenon, typical of architects, made them perceive buildings as form, piazzas as space, and graphics and sculpture as a combination of color, texture and scale. The ensemble became an abstraction for architects in the same decade that abstractionism was born in painting. The iconographic forms and clothing of the architecture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were reduced in their eyes to a multicolored texture in the service of space; the symbolic complexity and semantic inconsistency of the mannerist architecture were recognized and valued only as formal complexity and inconsistency; neoclassical architecture was not loved for its romantic use of associations, but for its formal simplicity. Architects liked the backs of 19th century railway stations, that is, in fact, sheds, and they only tolerated their front facades, considering them, albeit funny, but inappropriate dislocations of historicizing eclecticism. The system of symbols developed by commercial artists from Madison Avenue, on which the symbolic atmosphere of sprawling cities is based, was never recognized. In the 1950s and 1960s, these “abstract expressionists” of contemporary architecture recognized only one dimension of the traditional European “city on a hill”, namely its “pedestrian scale” and “density of urban life” due to the respective architecture. This view of medieval urbanism gave rise to fantasies about megastructures (or megascultures?), That is, all the same medieval "cities on a hill", only technologically improved, and strengthened modernist architects in their hatred of cars. At the same time, the contradictory polyphony of signs and symbols in the medieval city at different levels of its perception and comprehension - in the composition of buildings and squares - passed by the consciousness of architects focused on space. Perhaps these symbols, in addition to the fact that their content has already become alien, in scale and level of complexity required too much insight from a modern person with his wounded feelings and impatient pace of life. Perhaps this explains the paradoxical fact that the return to the values of iconography for many architects of our generation was due to the sensitivity of pop art artists of the early 1960s, as well as the discovery of "ducks" and "decorated sheds" on Highway 66: from Rome to Las Vegas, but vice versa, from Las Vegas to Rome.
Cathedral like a duck and a barn
In the iconographic sense, the cathedral is both a decorated barn and a duck at the same time. The Late Byzantine Church of the Little Metropolis in Athens is absurd as an architectural work. It is "non-scale": its small size does not correspond to the complexity of its shape - if, of course, the shape should be determined exclusively by constructive logic, because the space enclosed in its square hall could be covered without the help of internal supports supporting the intricate structure of vaults, drum and dome. However, as a duck, it is not so absurd - as an echo of the Greek cross-domed system, constructively ascending to large buildings in large cities, but here it received a purely symbolic application on the scale of a small church. And this duck is decorated with a collage applique made of objet trouvés - bas-reliefs left over from antique buildings and built into the new masonry, which have retained a rather explicit symbolic content. Amiens Cathedral is a billboard behind which the building is hidden. Gothic cathedrals were considered unfortunate in the sense that they lacked an "organic unity" between the main and side facades. However, this disunity is a natural reflection of the internal contradiction inherent in a complex building, which from the side of the cathedral square is a more or less two-dimensional screen for propaganda, and from the rear side it is a building obeying the constructive laws of masonry. It is a reflection of the contradiction between image and function, which is often found in decorated sheds. (In the case of a cathedral, the rear shed is also a duck, since it is shaped like a cross in plan.) The facades of the great cathedrals of the Ile-de-France region are two-dimensional planes on the scale of the entire building; in the upper tiers, they have to split into towers in order to interact with the surrounding rural landscape. But at the level of detail, these facades are entire independent buildings that simulate the spatial nature of architecture with the help of the enhanced three-dimensionality of their reliefs and sculptures. Niches for statues, as noted by Sir John Summerson, are an additional layer of architecture within architecture. At the same time, the impression that the facade produces is due to an extremely complex symbolic and associative meaning, which is generated not only by the edicules themselves and the statues placed in them, but also by their mutual arrangement, which reproduces the order of the ranks of the heavenly hierarchy on the facade. In this orchestration of messages, the connotation practiced by modern architects hardly plays an important role. The configuration of the facade actually completely disguises the three-nave structure hidden behind it, while the portal and the rose window give only minimal hints of the structure of the architectural complex located inside.
Symbolic evolution in Las Vegas
The architectural evolution of the typology of the Gothic cathedral can be reconstructed by analyzing the succession of stylistic and symbolic changes that gradually accumulated over the decades. A similar evolution - which is a rarity in modern architecture - we have the opportunity to capture and study on the material of the commercial architecture of Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, however, this evolution fits into years instead of decades, reflecting at least the heightened fussiness of our time, if not the general ephemerality of commercial versus religious message. Las Vegas is consistently evolving towards more widespread and large-scale symbolism. In the 1950s, the Golden Nugget Casino on Fremont Street was an orthodox decorated barn with huge advertising signs, in essence typical of American Main Street, ugly and mediocre. However, by the beginning of the 1960s, it had become one solid sign; the building's box has practically disappeared from sight. Electrographics have been made even more poignant - to keep up with the competition, and the scale and context of the new decade, which have become even more insane and disorienting. The freestanding signs on the Strip, similar to the towers of San Gimignano, are also consistently increasing in size. They grow either by replacing some signs with others, as in the Flamingo, Desert Inn or Tropicana, or by expanding, as in the case of the Caesers Palace sign. In the latter case, one additional column was added to the free-standing pediment "portico" on each side, each crowned with its own statue - this is a daring decision, however, as the problem itself has no precedents in the entire millennial evolution of ancient architecture.
Renaissance and decorated barn
The iconography of Renaissance architecture does not differ in such an overtly propagandistic character as the iconography of medieval architecture or the architecture of the Strip, although its decor, literally borrowed from the lexicon of ancient Roman, classical architecture, was to become an effective tool for the revival of ancient civilization. However, since most of the Renaissance decor depicts the structure, that is, is the symbol of the structure, this decor is more closely associated with the barn to which it is attached than the decor characteristic of the architecture of the Middle Ages or the Strip. The image of construction and space in this case rather supports than contradicts construction and space as physical substances. Pilasters represent a system of structural ties on the wall surface, corner stones represent the strength of the side edges of the wall; vertical profiles - protection of horizontal segments from above; rusty - support of the wall from below; serrated cornice - protection of the wall surface from rain drops; horizontal profiles - successive depressions of the wall plane; Finally, the combination of almost all of the above types of decor around the portal symbolically emphasizes the importance of the entrance. And although some of these elements are indeed functional - for example, cornices (but not pilasters) - they all have a completely explicit symbolic meaning, establishing an associative link between the sophistication of this particular building and the glory of Ancient Rome. But by no means all of the iconography of the Renaissance is associated with the theme of constructions. The cartouche above the door is a sign. The baroque facades of Francesco Borromini, for example, are dotted with symbols in the form of bas-reliefs - religious, dynastic and others. It is noteworthy that Gideon, in his excellent analysis of the façade of the Church of San Carlo alle Cuatare Fontane (Borromini), discusses contrapuntal layering, the undulating rhythm of the façade, and the finest detailing of shapes and surfaces solely as abstract elements of a composition facing the outside of the street, without even mentioning the complex layering of symbolic meanings, which they contain. The Italian palazzo is a decorated barn par excellence. For two centuries, from Florence to Rome, one and the same planning scheme - in the form of a suite of rooms flanking a square-shaped, colonnaded cortile, with an entrance opening in the center of the facade, three floors and sometimes added mezzanines - served as a permanent basis for the whole a number of stylistic and compositional solutions. The same "architectural skeleton" was used for the construction of Palazzo Strozzi, with its three floors, differing in the depth of rustication, and for the construction of Palazzo Rucellai, with its pseudo-constructive pilasters of three different orders, and for the Palazzo Farnese, with its horizontal rhythm, which arose due to the opposition of fortified corners and a richly ornamented central portal, and, finally, for the Odescalchi palazzo with its gigantic order, superimposing the image of one monumental floor on three actual ones. The reason for the generally accepted appreciation of the development of Italian civil architecture from the mid-15th to the mid-17th century is that it was based on the principle of a decorated barn. The same principle of ornamentation is further extended to other, newer versions of the "palazzo" - commercial and senza cortili. The stylobate part of The Carson Pirie Scott department store is decorated with cast-iron bas-reliefs with floral patterns, the fine detailing of which helps to keep the attention of buyers at the window level, while the upper floors demonstrate only the dry constructive symbolism of the standard loft, that is, in sharp contrast to the lower part of the formal vocabulary. The standard barn of the Howard Jonson high-rise motel looks more like a "box" in the spirit of the "Radiant City" than a palazzo, but the frank symbolism of its entrance, covered with something like a pediment - a triangular frame painted in a heraldic orange color - can be seen as a modern reincarnation of the antique pediment and the feudal gate coat of arms in a rescale that follows a leap from the context of a European urban piazza into a sprawling pop art suburb.
19th century eclecticism
The symbolism of stylistic eclecticism in 19th century architecture was essentially functional, although sometimes nationalistic motives are mixed with it - an example is the appeal in France to the Renaissance of the time of Henry IV, and in England to the style of the Tudor era. Moreover, each historical style clearly corresponded to a certain functional typology. Banks were built in the form of classic basilicas, which implied civic responsibility and loyalty to tradition; the commercial buildings looked like burghers' houses; the university buildings of Oxford and Cambridge rather copied the Gothic, the classics, which was supposed to symbolize, according to George Howe, "the battle for knowledge" and "carrying the torch of humanism through the dark times of economic determinism", while choosing either "perpendicular" or "decorative" The style for mid-century English churches reflected theological divisions between the Oxford and Cambridge movements. A hamburger-shaped hamburger kiosk is a modern, more direct attempt to express function through association, albeit for commercial persuasion rather than clarification of theological subtleties. Donald Drew Egbert, in his analysis of the works submitted in the mid-19th century for the Rome Prize at the École de Beauz-ar (this "lair of the bad guys"), called functionalism through association the "symbolic manifestation of functionalism" that preceded the functionalism of physical substance, which later became the basis modernism: the image preceded the substance. Egbert also speaks of the inherent balance in the new building types of the 19th century between the expression of function through physiognomy and the expression of function through style. For example, a train station was recognized by the presence of a cast-iron landing stage and a large clock face. These physiognomic features contrasted with the explicit heraldic message of the eclectic-Renaissance waiting rooms and other train stations located in the front zone. Siegfried Gideon called this subtly staged contrast between two zones of the same building a blatant contradiction - the nineteenth-century “split of sensations” -because he saw only technology and space in architecture and ignored the moment of symbolic communication.
Modernist decor
Modernist architects began to turn the back of the building into a front, emphasizing the symbolism of the barn configuration to create their own architectural vocabulary, while denying in theory what they themselves did in practice. They said one thing and did another. “Less is more” - even so, but, for example, the exposed steel I-beams attached by Mies van der Rohe to the refractory concrete columns are as decorative as the overhead pilasters on the pillars of Renaissance buildings or the carved lisens on the pillars of Gothic cathedrals. (As it turns out, “less” requires more labor.) Whether consciously or not, since the Bauhaus triumphed over Art Deco and decorative arts, modernist decor has rarely symbolized anything other than architecture. More precisely, its content stubbornly continues to be spatial and technological. Just like the Renaissance vocabulary, that is, the classical order system, Mies's constructive decor - although it contradicts the specific structures he decorates - as a whole accentuates its architectural meaning in the building. If the classical order symbolized "the revival of the golden age of the Roman Empire", then the modern I-beam symbolizes "the honest expression of modern technology as an element of space" - or something like that. Note, by the way, that the technologies that Mees elevated into a symbol were "modern" during the industrial revolution, and it is these technologies, and not at all actual electronic technologies, that continue to serve to this day as a source of symbolism for modernist architecture.
Decor and interior space
Misa's overhead I-beams depict a naked steel structure, and due to such an artificial technique, a real refractory frame hidden behind the I-beams - forcedly bulky and closed - begins to look not so bulky. In his early interiors, Mies used decorative marble to define the boundaries of space. The panels of marble or marble-like material in the Barcelona Pavilion, the Three Courtyard House project and other buildings from the same period are less emblematic than its later external pilasters, but the rich marble finish, given the material's reputation as a rare material, clearly symbolizes luxury. … Although these seemingly “floating in the air” panels today can be easily confused with the abstract expressionist canvases of the 1950s, then their task was to articulate “fluid space”, giving it direction within a linear steel frame. The decor here is at the service of space. The sculpture of Kolbe in the Barcelona Pavilion, perhaps, carries certain symbolic associations, but here, too, it primarily serves as an accent giving direction to space; it only emphasizes - through contrast - the machine aesthetics of the forms that surround it. The next generation of modernist architects transformed this combination of guiding panels and sculptural accents into a common design technique for exhibitions and museum displays, implying that each element fulfills both informational and spatial direction functions. For Mies, these elements were symbolic rather than informational; they demonstrated the contrast between the natural and the machine, elucidating the essence of modernist architecture through its opposition to what it is not. Neither Mies nor his followers used forms as symbols to convey any non-architectural meaning. Socialist realism in the Mies pavilion would have been as inconceivable as the monumental painting of the New Deal era on the walls of the Lesser Trianon (if one does not take into account that the flat roof in the 1920s was already a symbol of socialism in itself). In the interior of the Renaissance period, decor combined with abundant lighting was also used to set accents and give direction to the space. But in them, unlike the interiors of Mies, only structural elements were decorative: frames, profiles, pilasters and architraves, which accentuated the form and helped the viewer to grasp the structure of the enclosed space - while the surfaces provided a neutral context. At the same time, inside the Mannerist villa of Pius V in Rome, pilasters, niches, architraves and cornices rather hide the true configuration of space, or, more precisely, blur the border between the wall and the vault - due to the fact that these elements associated with the wall suddenly transfer to the surface of the vault. In the Byzantine church of Martorana in Sicily, there is neither architectural clarity nor mannerist blur. The images here completely overwhelm the space, the mosaic pattern hides the form on which it is superimposed. The ornament exists almost independently of the walls, pylons, spotlights, vaults and domes, and sometimes conflicts with these architectural elements. The corners are rounded so that they do not intrude into the continuous surface of the mosaic, and its golden background softens the geometry even more - in the dim light, which only occasionally snatches out especially significant symbols from the darkness, the space disintegrates, turning into an amorphous haze. The gilded rocailles of the Amalienburg pavilion in Nymphenburg do the same thing, only by means of a bas-relief. A convex pattern, like an overgrown spinach bush that covers walls and furniture, fittings and candelabra, is reflected in mirrors and crystal, plays in the light and immediately disappears into the indefinite nooks of a building curved in plan and section, crushes the space to a state of amorphous radiance. It is characteristic that the rococo ornament hardly symbolizes anything and certainly does not propagate anything. It "muddies" the space, but while retaining its abstract character, it remains essentially architectural; while in the Byzantine church, propaganda symbolism overpowers architecture.
Las Vegas Strip
The Las Vegas Strip at night, like the interior of the Martorana, is a predominance of symbolic images in a dark, amorphous space; but, as in Amalienburg, it is more glitter and brilliance than haze. Any indication of the configuration of space or the direction of movement comes from burning lights, and not from forms that reflect light. The light on the Strip is always direct; the signs themselves are its source. They do not reflect light from an external, sometimes disguised source like most billboards and modernist architecture. The automated neon lights on the Strip move faster than the glare on the surface of the mosaic, the iridescence of which is associated with the speed of the sun or the observer. The intensity of these lights and their rate of movement are increased to cover a wider area, to adapt to a higher speed, and ultimately produce a more energetic impact, to which our perception responds and which is achievable thanks to modern technology. In addition, the pace of development of our economy gives additional impetus to this mobile and easily replaceable environment decoration, which we call outdoor advertising. The messages of architecture have changed today, but despite this difference, its methods remain the same, and architecture is no longer just “skillful, precise, magnificent play of volumes in the light”. The strip during the day is a completely different place, not Byzantine at all. The volumes of buildings are visible, but in terms of visual impact and symbolic content, they continue to play a secondary role compared to signs. In the space of a sprawling city, there is no that isolation and orientation that are characteristic of the space of traditional cities. The sprawling city is characterized by openness and uncertainty, and is identified by points in space and patterns on the ground; they are not buildings, but two-dimensional or sculptural symbols in space, complex configurations, graphic or representative. Acting as symbols, signs and buildings allow a space to be read through its position and direction, while lighting poles, street network and parking system make it ultimately clear and navigable. In a residential suburb, the orientation of houses towards the streets, their stylistic solution as decorated sheds, as well as landscaping and garden decorations: wheels from caravans, mailboxes on chains, street lamps in colonial style and fragments of traditional hedges made of thin poles - all this plays that the same role as signs in a commercial suburb is that of space identifiers. Like the complex cluster of architectural objects in the Roman forum, the Strip in the daytime gives the impression of chaos if taken only as a multitude of forms, ignoring their symbolic content. The Forum, like the Strip, was a landscape of symbols - layering of meanings that were read from the location of roads, from the symbolism of structures, as well as from the symbolic reincarnations of buildings that existed here before, and sculptures placed everywhere. From a formal point of view, the forum was a monstrous mess; with the symbolic - a rich mixture. The triumphal arches in Rome were the prototype of billboards (mutatis mutandis in terms of scale, content and speed of movement). Their architectural decor, which included pilasters, pediments and caissons, was superimposed on them using the technique of bas-relief and was just a hint of the architectural form. This decor had the same symbolic character as the bas-reliefs depicting processions, as well as inscriptions that compete for space on their surface. Acting as billboards carrying a specific message, the triumphal arches of the Roman Forum simultaneously played the role of spatial markers that guided the movement of processions in the complex urban landscape. On Highway 66, billboards, standing in rows at the same angle to the traffic flow, at an equal distance from each other and from the road, perform a similar spatial function. As the brightest, cleanest and most well-groomed elements of the industrial suburban area, billboards often not only mask the unsightly landscape, but also ennoble it. Like the funerary structures along the Appian Way (again, mutatis mutandis in terms of scale), they point the way across the vast expanses beyond the residential suburb. But be that as it may, these spatial-navigational functions of their form, location and orientation are secondary in comparison with the purely symbolic function. Tanya advertisements, influencing the viewer through graphics and displaying anatomical details, as well as monumental advertisements for the victories of Emperor Constantine, influenced by inscriptions and bas-reliefs carved in stone, play a more important role on the road than as a space identifier.
Sprawling city and megastructure
Urban phenomena such as "ugly and mediocre architecture" and "decorated barn" are closer to the typology of a sprawling city than to the typology of megastructure. We have already talked about how commercial vernacular architecture became for us a living source of awakening, which determined our turn towards symbolism in architecture. In our Las Vegas study, we described the triumph of symbols-in-space over shapes-in-space against the backdrop of a brutal automotive landscape of long distances and high speeds, where the subtleties of pure architectural space are already elusive. But the symbolism of the sprawling city lies not only in the radical communicativeness of the roadside commercial strip (a decorated barn or duck), but also in residential architecture. Despite the fact that the ranch house - multi-level or of another type - in its spatial configuration follows only a few simple standard schemes, on the outside it is decorated with a very diverse, although always contextual palette of means, combining elements of many styles: colonial, New Orleans, regency, French-provincial, western style, modernism and others. Low-rise residential complexes with landscaping - especially in the South-West - are the same decorated sheds, the pedestrian courtyards of which, like in motels, although isolated from the road, are located in close proximity to it. A comparison of the features of a sprawling city and a megastructure can be found in Table 2. The image of a sprawling city is the result of a process. In this sense, this image is fully subordinate to the canon of modernist architecture, which requires that form arise as an expression of function, design and construction methods, that is, it follows organically from the process of its creation. On the contrary, the megastructure for our time is a distorting interference in the natural process of city development, which is carried out, among other things, for the sake of creating a certain image. Modern architects contradict themselves when they simultaneously support functionalism and the typology of megastructure. They are unable to recognize Streep's image of a city-in-process, because, on the one hand, this image is too familiar to them, and on the other hand, it is too unlike what they were taught to consider acceptable.
