The most expensive development in US history tries to redefine junkspace urbanism on the Strip

摘要

Las Vegas is universally dismissed as non-architectural or anti-urban. At night, neon signs and electronic billboards orientate the car driver and conveniently overshadow the city's junkspace context of car parks. They signal Vegas' immersive gambling enclave hugging the four-mile Strip yet, while old signs are regularly taken to the neon graveyard in the Nevada desert, little contemporary architecture has replaced them. The Strip's rnrelative resurgence at the hands of entrepreneur Steve Wynn reached its height with the 1998 Bellagio hotel and casino, now owned by gambling giant MGM Mirage. With its eight-acre lake and artsy dancing fountains, it was merely another thematic step from Vegas' mid-century modernism of the Rat Pack era.