urban border zones: reappropriating " LAS VEGAS ": *OUTLINE* in progress

0. DIALECTICS

moving away from a dependence on binary relationships to exploring relationships, thresholds, "relational" architecture vs spaces of escape

1. SUBJECTIVITY and PLACE -- HISTORICAL ANALYSIS of the reception of our environments

1a. The repetitive experience (the resident): Body knowledge.

. ritual. permanence. ownership. the engaged subject.

. connection to place through interaction.

1b. The singular experience (the visitor): Optical consumption.

. momentary. transience. no responsibility/appropriation. the freedom of the shopper.

. connection to place through image.

1c. Representation of these modes of perception: method for defining these connections, use in design?

1*. Transcendence/conflation of these experiences.

. reversal of "resident" and "visitor" subjectivities in land art and monuments. connection without ownership. specific subjectivity.

. the intentionally (dis)placed subject. pedagogical/politicized architecture of utopian designers.

. homogenization in communities: second- and third-home urbanism. ownership without connection. generic subjectivity.

2. RELATIONAL -- NEW SYNTHESIS of subjectivity and place

2a. Crisis: homogenization and collapse of dialectics

. relevance: (collective) ownership today

. privatizing public, public disappearing. different outward appearances but same spaces. crafting the same type of character, identity lost. defining ourselves, our contexts, where we come from but operating with no common ground. can we still preserve a sense of ownership and connection to physical space?

. too much imagery, too much information: seeking our own individual experiences, but still acting as anonymous subjects.

2b. What are we looking for? CASE STUDIES

. role reversals, new subjectivities, new definitions of place,connection,identity,collective

2c. Focus on social interaction and revealing cultural forces: the contingencies of relationships between people, objects, environments

. Architecture can sharpen consciousness of the self

. And can thus empower people in environments of growing artificial ubiquity

3. LAS VEGAS

Las Vegas offers ubiquitous images for both tourist and resident, though completely disassociated.

. Mapping the communities: where are the tourists, where are the residents. who is moving, who is static. investment in the city?

. Perceptions of the city.

. Synthesis: the threshold between living and playing, reality and image, environment and individual

...

thesis in brief

Now, at a moment when massive urbanization is spreading around the globe, and in an era during which our relationships to physical space as well as to one another are being continuously reconfigured by technology and mobility, architecture must interrogate the role of urban environments in fostering sustained interaction, confrontation, and innovation by reconsidering the design of civic space.

Architecture is most challenged by the exclusionary nature of the city and the fact that global markets and networks have interiorized nearly every aspect of contemporary society, which as a result relies heavily on the strength of boundaries and images for defining identity and as such resists most truly democratic formations.

Taking advantage of the ongoing urban process of making and remaking boundaries as images in and of the city are constantly reappropriated and transformed, architecture can use these tools to employ new strategies for establishing common ground and forging connections that will resonate with and empower the public citizen.

bibliography

URBAN ENVIRONMENTS AND POLITICAL INTERACTION

Aureli, Paul Vittorio. “Toward the Archipelago: defining the political and the formal in architecture.” Log 11.

Winter 2008. p 91-119.

Davis, Mike. Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. New York: Vintage Books, 1999.

Delany, Samuel R. “…Three, Two, One, Contact: Times Square Red, 1998.” Giving ground: the politics of

propinquity. ed. Joan Copjec and Michael Sorkin. London: Verso, 1999.

Easterling, Keller. Enduring innocence: global architecture and its political masquerades. Cambridge: MIT Press,

2005.

Friedmann, John. “Transnational Migration: Spaces of Incorporation.” The Prospect of Cities. 2002. p 39-65.

Future City. ed. Stephen Read, Jurgen Rosemann, and Job van Eldijk. London: Spon Press, 2005.

Harvey, David. Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

Herzog, Lawrence A. Return to the center: culture, public space, and city building in a global era. Austin:

University of Texas Press, 2006.

Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Tafuri, Manfredo. “Reason’s Adventures: Naturalism and the City in the Century of the Enlightenment,”

Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1980.

Visualizing the City. ed. Alan Marcus and Dietrich Neumann. London: Routledge, 2007.

Webber, Melvin. “The Urban Place and the Non-Place Urban Realm.” Exploration into Urban Structure. 1964.

EXPERIENCE ECONOMY

Architourism: authentic, escapist, exotic, spectacular. ed. Joan Ockman and Salomon Frausto. Munich: Prestel,

2005.

Cass, Jeffrey. “Egypt on Steroids: Luxor Las Vegas and Postmodern Orientalism.” Architecture and Tourism:

Perception, Performance, and Place. ed. D. Medina Lasansky and Brian McLaren. Oxford: Berg, 2004.

p 241-263.

Easterling, Keller. “Only the Many.” Log 11. Winter 2008. p 143-151.

Klingmann, Anna. Brandscapes: Architecture in the Experience Economy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007.

Koolhaas, Rem. Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping. Cambridge: Harvard University Graduate School of

Design, 1998.

Lowenthal, David. “The Past as Theme Park.” Theme Park Landscapes: Antecedents and Variations. ed. Terence

Young and Robert Riley. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2002.

Moore, Charles. “You Have to Pay for the Public Life.” Perspecta 9/10. 1965.

Variations on a theme park: the new American city and the end of public space. ed. Michael Sorkin. New York:

Hill and Wang, 1992.

REPRESENTATION AND SUBJECTIVITY

Habraken, N. J. Transformations of the Site. Cambridge: Awater Press, 1982.

Halprin, Lawrence. Cities. New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1963.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.

Koolhaas, Rem and Bruce Mau. S, M, L, XL: Office for Metropolitan Architecture. ed. Jennifer Sigler. New York:

Monacelli Press, 1995.

Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960.

Mau, Bruce with Jennifer Leonard and the Institute Without Boundaries. Massive Change. London: Phaidon, 2004.

DANCE

Armstrong, Leslie and Roger Morgan. Space for Dance: An Architectural Design Guide. New York: Pub. Center for

Cultural Resources, 1984.

Chapman, John. “The Aesthetic Interpretation of Dance History.” Dance Chronicle. Vol. 3, No. 3. 1979-1980,

p 271.

Gill, Jerry H. “On Knowing the Dancer from the Dance.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Vol. 34,

No. 2. Winter 1975. p 125-135.

Hanna, Judith Lynne. “The Mentality and Matter of Dance.” Art Education. March 1983.

Kealiinohomoku, Joann W. “Myth and Ritual in Time and Space.” Dance Research Journal. Vol. 29, No. 1.

Spring 1997. p 65-72.

Seitz, Jay A. “Mind, Dance, and Pedagogy.” Journal of Aesthetic Education. Vol. 36, No. 4. Winter 2002.

p 37-42.

Sparshott, Francis. “The Future of Dance Aesthetics.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Vol. 51, No. 2.

Spring 1993. p 227-234.

LAS VEGAS

Davis, Mike. “The Strip Versus Nature.” Metropolis Now. ed. Ramesh Kumar. 2000, p 100-110.

Hickey, Dave. “Dialectical Utopias: On Santa Fe and Las Vegas.” Harvard Design Magazine, No. 4.

Winter/Spring 1998. p 1-5.

Las Vegas: An Unconventional History. ed. Michelle Farrari and Stephen Ives. New York: Bulfinch Press, 2005.

Stripping Las Vegas: A Contextual Review of Casino Resort Architecture. ed. Karin Jaschke and Silke Otsch. 2002.

Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas: the forgotten symbolism of

architectural form. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977.

DATA SOURCES

Las Vegas Government website.

CityCenter website.

“Las Vegas issue.” Urban Land. September 2007.

“Reurbanizing the core.” Urban Land. April 2005, p 105-118.

Union Park website.

Vegas Today and Tomorrow website.

urban border zones: reappropriating " LAS VEGAS "

OUTLINE in progress

No comments:

thesis in brief

site+program

notes

bibliography

thesis prepster

other prepsters

followers