Las Vegas, sometimes known as Sin City, is perhaps the most famous desert metropolis where people gamble, and indulge in entertainment, and other vices. Each year, the city is visited by hundreds of millions of tourists who come to see its flashing lights and round-the-clock nightlife. Las Vegas has garnered so much attention that even Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown sought to study its urbanism, concluding with their theories on duck and decorated shed buildings in the early 1970s. But 50 years later, Vegas is still a city that constantly reinvents its architectural identity.
Las Vegas was founded by railroad workers and ranchers drawn to the location because of its natural springs. Vegas maintained a strong embrace of the Wild West freedoms, which largely included gambling, which later made it a hub of organized crime. Mobsters and gangs funded the casinos and bars that rose on the strip, and Vegas quickly became a playground for low-cost thrills. The strip itself grew after the opening of El Rancho Vegas, and other Old West-themed resorts built the framework for the vision of Las Vegas. As tourists flocked to the desert oasis, money began to pour in from banks and other investors. Eventually, millions of people traveled there a year, not just to gamble, but to see famous performers such as Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. Vegas continued to grow after the dawn of World War II as Nevada became home to a test site where more than 100 nuclear weapons were detonated over a decade. Many visitors at the time recalled seeing the lethal mushroom clouds rising into the sky from their hotel room windows.
Eventually, Vegas began to shape into what we know it to be now, with the boom of luxury casinos and enormous resorts taking over the strip. These massive complexes gained inspiration from hyper-specific themes that spared no detail. Caesar’s Palace was designed to look like a faux, gaudy ancient Rome, The New York, New York Hotel looked identical to the New York City Skyline, even featuring a rollercoaster where passengers ride in a taxi cab, and the Luxor Hotel and Casino houses guests in a 30-story pyramid. The duck and shed ideas that Venturi and Denise Scott Brown grew to take on their ultimate form with the over-the-top resorts that dotted the strip.
Fast forward to the present day, and some might argue that the newer Las Vegas sites have lost the eccentric spirit it was once known for. Although the newer resorts and casinos are much more refined and modern, they represent a more elegant Vegas spirit, a move away from the cheekiness and literal forms it once took on. The Aria, a Pelli Clarke Pelli design features multiple sleek, glass, curving buildings that allude to a more modern, sophisticated Vegas experience. Daniel Liebeskind’s Crystals shopping center features some of the world’s most luxurious stores with an exterior that jets out into the street like a glass shard, and the Vinoly-designed Vdara Hotel’s form makes it look like a rival of the Aria, and supposedly has a “death ray”, which causes extreme temperatures on the ground based on the way the sun hits the windows.
The combination of the new buildings that project Vegas into a new era next to the exuberant fakeness of the old perfectly reveals the history of this city. Las Vegas is unlike any other city in the world. You’d never find a miniature Eiffel Tower in Chicago or a replica Venetian Palace in London. It all only makes sense when it comes together as a hodgepodge in the middle of a desert. In no other place on earth will you find a Pelli Clarke Pelli-designed hotel near a Trevi Fountain replica, or a giant Sphinx nearby an iconic Frank Gehry building.
Editor's Note: This article was originally published on November 15, 2022.
