Paul Goldberger has something to say about CityCenter in the latest New Yorker:
But it’s been clear for a while that Las Vegas has been running out of themes. The trouble is that its effects rely entirely on dazzlement, an over-the-top gigantism that gets old fast. By this point, you could do a hotel that reproduced Angkor Wat or the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan and no one would raise an eyebrow. And as Las Vegas has grown—until the recession, its expansion had helped make Nevada the fastest-growing state in the nation—the city has started to feel a little uncomfortable about its reputation as a place where developers spend billions of dollars on funny buildings. For several years now, there has been talk about whether Las Vegas could handle what in any other city might be referred to as real architecture. And in 2004, when the hotel company MGM Mirage now known as MGM Resorts International was looking for a way of filling in a sixty-six-acre site between two of its properties on the west side of the Strip the Bellagio and the Monte Carlo, it hit on the idea of turning the plot into a showcase for modern architecture.
via CityCenter, and architecture in Las Vegas, review : The New Yorker.
Obviously Goldberger is an esteemed architectural critic, and I’m not going to quibble with his perceptions of how CityCenter fits in with the big picture of Architecture. But there’s something I found interesting: Goldberger’s writing about a Strip where Steve Wynn apparently does not exist.
Yes, he mentions Bellagio, but only as an example of “theme park architecture” in the vein of Caesars Palace and Circus Circus, wedged in between New York-New York and Treasure Island. But there’s no mention of how Wynn’s resorts differ from the more literally themed hotels, and no credit to Wynn for building a non-themed resort aiming for an upscale feel in 2005–a resort that was undoubtedly an influence on CityCenter. Wynn gets not credit for bringing the concept of luxury to the Strip, and steering the industry away from the Circus Circus paradigm that dominated post-1982. It’s a telling omission. I don’t know whether it means that Wynn’s buildings aren’t as consequential to mainstream architecture critics as they are to us, or whether Goldberger just left him out to simplify his argument that CityCenter is an unwonted break from theme park architecture.
Surely those two giant curved glass towers a mile north mean something to the architectural profile of the Strip; they’re clearly not pirate ships or faux medieval castles. And they undercut Jim Murren’s implication that CityCenter is the first and only Vegas resort to break away from kitsch. I don’t think that THEhotel at Mandalay Bay is kitschy. In fact, it brought the same kind of minimalist modernism to the Strip back in 2003. In fact, one could say that the Mandalay Mile showed a level of planning that also presages CityCenter.
As far as Murren’s comments goes, we’ll see just how smart the planning is when the money starts coming in. Arguing about who’s the smartest planner is entirely subjective and non-falsifiable, but you can get an idea of who’s done the best job of building and marketing a place people like by checking out REVPAR and other metrics of financial performance.
As I said back in December, CityCenter is about an urban ambiance, but this doesn’t necessarily translate into a genuine urban space. To learn why casinos aren’t great urban institutions, I humbly suggest reading a book called Suburban Xanadu.