Ducks, Gambling and Cultural Bankruptcy, or The Bastardised Urban Landscape

A conversation between Marjetica Potrc and Sean Snyder. Marjetica Potrč: When Learning from Las Vegas, Robert Venturi’s seminal book about the American cityscape, was published in the 1970s it stunned architects by pointing to the obvious in the then contemporary American city: the signs and the strip. Las Vegas makes a case for the strip, since it is (nothing but) the strip, a straight avenue with big signs and little buildings. Now the strip is well incorporated into today’s cities and makes the case for ‘more of the same’. The signs are incorporated too. It’s just that they mutate.