Culture

The Unbuilt city

A new exhibit proves out of sight doesn’t mean out of mind

T.R. Witcher

Big projects tend to garner the attention in hype-happy Las Vegas—and this is no less true in architecture circles, where commissions to design towering high-rises or massive complexes like museums, theaters and airports can be the much-desired plumage in architects’ caps.

But the vitality of the built environment in Las Vegas depends, ultimately, not on big-ticket projects that draw in tourists, or even instant icons (think Frank Gehry). These look good in architecture magazines or travel shows, but the way forward must begin with smaller works that meet us closer to where and how we actually live. An abundance of smart, creative, local designs, spread throughout the city, can (perhaps) begin to chip away at the deadening urban form given by generations of stucco subdivisions, shopping centers and office parks.

Unbuilt Las Vegas, a new exhibit put on by the Nevada chapter of the American Institute of Architects, reveals many of the dynamic projects around town that, as of yet, have not been realized. The juried exhibition, which debuted Monday and continues through the end of the month, features unbuilt projects designed both by local architecture firms and by UNLV architecture students, and it rings in the start of AIA’s Architecture Week, the yearly celebration of Vegas buildings.

While 18 works were submitted for the exhibit, it should be pointed out that just three firms submitted 13 of the entries: assemblageSTUDIO, YWS Architects and Welles Pugsley Architects. One hopes that future exhibits will introduce Las Vegans to the design talents of a wider pool of architects.

Nonetheless, the designs themselves cover the gamut from casinos to libraries and schools, from lounges to homes. Three of the designs were awarded by the exhibit’s jurors. The honor award went to a design by architect Sean Coulter, of Welles Pugsley, for a new athletic facility at UNLV geared to student athletes. Its chief flourish is a tall, glass-walled chamber for the athletic department’s Hall of Fame.

The merit award went to a pair of towers by Clemente Cicoria of assemblageSTUDIO. Called NGage, the building design is a complex array of geometries—on some sides of the façades the towers feature a cool stack of horizontal louvers, and on others a crazy pattern that resembles an intricate house of cards—or an Etch-A-Sketch with right angles turning around and around on each other. It’s a busy design, but it never becomes convoluted.

The citation award went to the swankily named Casa-a-Gogo, designed by assemblageSTUDIO head Eric Strain. From its renderings the home is a clean-cut collection of intersecting planes that are concealed by a relatively blank, brick-walled façade. Its two-story door, which leads into a huge interior courtyard, pays homage to one of the homes designed in the influential Case House Study Program, a 20-year mid-century experiment in (modern) house design that featured work by famous designers such as Richard Neutra and Eero Saarinen.

But other houses in the exhibit are at least as compelling. The Casa Caldara, also designed by Strain, is a subdued, and to my mind more satisfying, interpretation of the flat-roofed boxy forms of most modern homes.

A more spirited entry is called, rather bombastically, Entelechy. (It’s actually a word made up by Aristotle, and it has something to do with the constant movement of things from their potential to their actuality.) The home, designed by James Warring of HNTB, is split into two parts. A glass-enclosed box for living and dining is covered by a muscular, double-diamond-shaped roof. A separate wing contains bedrooms and a gallery, and only an exterior cladding of hopelessly square panels—it looks like a 1980s kitchen—mars the design.

The most unexpected entry is for a Temporary Emergency Shelter Unit designed by Craig Palacious, a 4-by-8-foot polycarbonate box that can be assembled by unskilled labor and used to humanely house refugees. Another unusual design is Anthony Diaz’s proposal for an intriguing 12-story office tower and art gallery broken into four three-story cubes that are offset from the building’s spine—a sort of Jenga building. While its segmented mass is meant to provide a human scale, the renderings appear threatening, not helped by the vertical lines of the façade. The cubes end up looking more like stacked cages.

Perhaps fittingly, the least interesting designs are a pair of oversize Strip-like extravaganzas that feature oval-shaped or curving towers of mauve-colored glass, surrounded by the usual battery of pools and asphalt. While the architects, YWS, did better with their sleek L-shaped Rocker condo tower, the resort designs suggest that some designs—some visions of the city—are best left unbuilt.

Unbuilt Las Vegas

***

Through April 30

Architecture Studies Building, UNLV

894-3031

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