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Viva Las Vegas!
“Learning from Las Vegas”(1972) is an essay by Robert Venturi in which the author vindicates the tastes and customs of the common people, and how architects should adapt and be more receptive instead of creating monumental or pretentiously emblematic buildings.
Some of the concepts and articles that the author develops in the book are the symbolic analysis of the strip of Las Vegas (a city that practically distributes itself as a narrative comic strip), “the architecture of the ugly and ordinary” or “the decorated clinker”. As you can see, they all have very promising titles.
As an example, one of the most popular ideas in the book is the distinction between two types of buildings in Las Vegas: the “decorated barrack” and the “duck”.
The “duck” would be that special building, the ideas have been taken from theory to practice with all their consequences. It is authentic, it intends to be a “duck” and it is a duck.
The «decorated hut» is nothing more than a flat structure, an advertisement building in which the intention is simply to attract attention, in a purely decorative way, like the buildings on the streets of the Far West, where the façade of the building was an advertisement for the customers.
A very inspiring book that generates many lateral ideas, with principles perfectly applicable to user experience or interaction design. Dan Saffer made a great and funny presentation at the SXSW 2007: Learning Interaction Design from Las Vega$,The paper emphasises some of the concepts covered in the essay as applied to interaction design.