Disney Goes Pop
The authors of Learning from Las Vegas—early proponents of
the bold and the garish—take a look at King Mickey’s latest
resort.
By Robert Venturi
April 2004
“Throughout the history of architecture and urbanism, iconography
always dominated the scene, instructing and persuading us.”
We love it, the idea of it and the skill with which it has been
designed. This is not surprising since it represents what we have been
acknowledging for a long time: the messy vitality of the public sector
and the power of symbolic form. We were among the first highfalutin
architects to acknowledge Disneyland as valid and significant in our
writing and teaching, and in our designs for Disney in Orlando and
Paris. But alas, if you originate an idea, you often aren’t the one
to realize it.
We see the Pop Century Resort as a third evolution of Pop
Urbanism—beyond that engaging the symbolic-surface makeup of the
first Las Vegas, evolving from the Strip; beyond that engaging the
scenographic formal makeup of the second Las Vegas, evolving from
Disneyland. Here is a vivid urban complex that is beginning to embrace
symbolic content by combining surface and form, graphic signage, and
sculptural symbolism—both the “decorated shed” and the
“duck” (i.e., the loft whose surfaces are ornamented with
signs, and the building as sculptural symbol).
What is to come next? The urban complex that is a city rather than a
resort—a vivid multifaceted place that pragmatically juxtaposes
decorated sheds and ducks through signage and sculpture, civic and
commercial content—all in the service of enhanced communication,
the vital community-building tool of our multicultural era. This is what
the Las Vegases and Pop Century Resorts are leading up to and what the
Tokyo of today has essentially achieved.
But let us remember that throughout the history of architecture and
urbanism, iconography has always dominated the scene, instructing and
persuading us with its religious and civic content in ways no different
from today’s vigorous (and despised) commercial iconography. Let us
acknowledge the validity of those signs as a flourishing element within
that vital, generic American scene, as well as within the great
tradition of architecture and urbanism! Let us today transfer the murals
from the inside to the outside of the buildings! Let us not be limited
by the intimidations of taste and a Modernist revival that promotes
decadent/dramatique abstract expressionism and industrial rocaille for
the postindustrial age. Let us be stimulated by the vigor of iconography
appropriate for our information/electronic age!
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These four-story-high lawn ornaments replicate the emblematic 1960s
design of the Duncan Imperial yo-yo, which sold in record-making
quantities in 1962. Though the yo-yo dates back to antiquity, it
wasn’t until Donald Duncan modified its design in
1954—replacing the traditional tie knot around the axis with a
slip-string loop—that the Duncan yo-yo took on a life of its own. |
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An oversized foosball table and the iconic 1970s Mickey Mouse phone
tower over a game of soccer, indoctrinating kids into the land of Pop
Urbanism.
Images courtesy the Walt Disney Company |
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