caricature 12.21.09

city form: architecture

 
What are the defining elements of a city? What icons would create an easily recognized caricature of an urban place? Can cities be so easily distilled into five or six characteristic features? At New York New York, Paris, and the Venetian a sort of cartoon architecture recreates those great cities at a reduced, compressed, and handily reorganized scale — New York’s skyline is flattened into an impossible juxtaposition of buildings, the Eiffel Tower sits astride L’Opéra, and St. Mark’s Square is an interior shopping mall. So what is the next over-the-top theme for a Las Vegas casino? Weirdly, architecture. Fairly minimalist façade-wise, City Center, ‘capital of the new world’ (whatever that means) features Crystals, a shopping center by Daniel Libeskind and the Veer residential towers by Helmut Jahn.http://www.crystalsatcitycenter.com/http://www.daniel-libeskind.com/http://www2.citycenter.com/luxury_las_vegas_condos/default.aspx?link=veerhttp://www.murphyjahn.com/intro.htmshapeimage_5_link_0shapeimage_5_link_1shapeimage_5_link_2shapeimage_5_link_3
http://www.vegastodayandtomorrow.com/implode.htmhttp://www.vegastodayandtomorrow.com/implode.htmhttp://www.vegastodayandtomorrow.com/implode.htmshapeimage_8_link_0