Dubai and Las Vegas and Their Architecture Obnoxious With Regards to the Size - Case Study Example

 Las Vegas and Dubai are two cities that have a lot in common. They are both desert based tourist meccas and both attract a lot of investment capital. In the rush to compete for the world’s entertainment dollars, both cities have scrambled to build as many large and lavish tourist attractions as possible. This paper examines the history of these efforts and of these cities. Las Vegas was first encountered among Europeans by Raphael Rivera in 1829. The city was named because the lush Las Vegas Valley contained extensive green areas or meadows (the Spanish word for meadows is vegas). John C. Frémont led an expedition into the Las Vegas Valley in May of 1844 (Findlay, 61). At the time, Las Vegas was still a part of Mexico. His led a team of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. A little over ten years later, the property was annexed by the United States. Soon, Brigham Young led his Mormon mission into the areas to convert the native American population. Because saints developed a thriving Mormon colony at San Bernardino, California, the route from Salt Lake City to San Bernardino became known as the "Mormon Corridor." The route went right through the area and as a result, a fort was built to provide a stop-over for people on the route. The fort was built very close to where the current downtown area is today. However, the Las Vegas fort was abandoned by the Mormons after only a year or two. By 1860, Las Vegas had little or no inhabitants until a railroad passed through the area in 1905. The railroad was the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, auctioned off 110 acres near present-day downtown (the same area as the fort). In 1909, the state of Nevada established new Clark County situated around Las Vegas. Las Vegas incorporated in March 1911. Las Vegas gained its first popularity as a railroad town in the early 1900s. Due to the high number of mines in the area, Las Vegas became a popular staging point from which the many minors in the surrounding area could set up camp and ship their goods out to the rest of the country. Las Vegas became a tourist destination after the completion of the Hoover Dam in 1935. The town began to grow as result. In 1931, Las Vegas legalized gambling, but this did not result in an instant boom of casinos and tourists. It was not until the 1940’s that major building came to region. The early wave of casinos thrived, mostly as a result of the leadership of organized crime syndicates, like Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. In the 1950’s, Las Vegas gambling became quite popular and other gambling pockets, such as Galveston, Texas and Hot Springs, Arkansas suffered devastating blows to their fledgling gambling industries (Dunne, 101). In the late 1960s, Howard Hughes, the richest man in America at that time, purchased many casino-hotels, as well as television and radio stations in the city (Chung, 88). His and other legitimate corporations began to purchase casino-hotels, effectively ending the mob’s run as the most dominate influence in the city. The opening of Nellis Air Force Base would also bring in a steady stream of income over throughout the 1970s. As more military personnel and casino job-hunters flooded the area in the 1990’s, it helped start a land building boom in Las Vegas which has only subsided in the last few years. In the 1940s and 1950s, the history of Las Vegas’ architecture has been heavily influenced by Hollywood's 'Miracle Mile' and the 'Sunset Strip.' Las Vegas architecture used the car inspired design for buildings and signs, hoping that super-signs would attract motorist's while driving down the highway at speeds in excess of 40-50 miles per hour. Las Vegas adopted California’s Roadside Architecture , also known as 'mimetic architecture.' This motif favored the exaggerated, outlandish and novelty stylings, such as structures shaped like food or appliances (Chung, 12). This was an era of extreme gaudiness and eccentricity. The design and architecture appeared tacky and bold, but they served a distinct purpose: They announced Las Vegas as an area teeming with modern opulence and success. The 1950s ushered in the era of futuristic modernism, including the sub-categories of Googie and Populuxe Design. The upswept roofs, proliferation of steel, neon and glass, and the geometric shapes consistent with a country just beginning to enter the space age were all popular aspect of Googie design. Las Vegas established the cartoonish design that can be found among many Las Vegas motels and hotels, patterned after Disneyland, built in 1954. To this very day, 'Disneyland in the Desert' is still a major influencing theme throughout Las Vegas Design. During the 1960’s Las Vegas experienced another tremendous boom period and its architects were up to the challenge of building this quite unique city. This was during the height of neon and kitch design. A group of architects distinguished themselves as the avante guard of Las Vegas architects, known as the “young turks.” They included George Tate, Julio Lucchesi, Ed Hendricks, Jack Knighton, Jack Belcher, Jim McDaniels, Jim Little, Gerald Moffitt and Robert A. Fielden. By the late 1960s, Las Vegas was fully established as vacation boom town. But Las Vegas was also this growing city of permanent residents and city planners who called it home. Thus, the city stayed on the leading edge of architectural progress as far as civic buildings and planning was concerned. In 1968 the local chapter American Institute of Architecture undertook a major civic project on behalf of the rapidly growing city: to develop a master plan for the downtown area. Prior to this, Las Vegas was predominantly one giant strip of road and sprawl- the consummate automobile town (Schmid, 178). A new vibrant downtown would a new dimension to the tourist attraction, as well as provide another base of jobs and cultural activity for the locals. The master plan included a detailed study and a scale model. The model proposed to develop the unused land west of Main Street, making a big loop inside the vacant land, which would become a green area and government center. The plan also included a railroad interchange which would deliver out of town passengers and was the genesis for the modern urban monorail system. Las Vegas as a city has become famous, not only for recreation, but for re-creation. Any established landmark is fair game to be used as a prototypes for a new mega-hotel. Examples include the New York Skyline (New York, New York), the Pyramids of Gaza (the Luxor), the Seattle Space Needle (the Stratosphere), the Eiffel tower (Paris) or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Hard Rock). Several prominent Las Vegas buildings have been demolished, but there are also several still standing that are historically and architecturally significant. Some of them include: Mormon Fort. The Fort was built in 1855 before the casinos, the organized crime, and Steve Wynn, when Las Vegas was just a stop on a trail primarily used by settlers, Mormon saints and missionaries and for monthly mail service from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. The Old Mormon Fort and its adobe buildings comprise the oldest non-Indian structure and the oldest historic building still standing in Southern Nevada today. The Golden Gate Casino was built in 1906, is located in the heart of present day downtown and is the oldest hotel-casino still in operation in Las Vegas. This hotel would be the site of the first telephone and first shrimp cocktail in Las Vegas. Hailed as an architectural masterpiece, the old Las Vegas High Schoolwas built in 1930 and is now known as the Las Vegas Academy of Performing Arts. This is perhaps the cities best known example of Art Deco architecture, with its concrete cast façade and stucco friezes depicting animals, vegetation and medallions. The building is listed on both the National Register of Historical Places and the state Register of Historic Places. The Downtown Post Office/Federal Building was built in 1933 with funds provided by the New Deal's Works Progress Administration. This building epitomizes neoclassical style and has recently been converted into a cultural center (Schmid, 301). Built in 1941, the El Cortez Hotel still serves as the anchor for the east end of Downtown Las Vegas. The hotel is renowned example of the Spanish style architecture that is popular among many of the smaller buildings in Las Vagas today (Anderton, 67). The original building still stands in today's resort. The casino was once owned by "Bugsy" Siegel, who sold it to fund the construction of the Flamingo Hotel. The Little Church of the West was built of cedar and California redwood in 1941. In its long history, the church has been the site of numerous celebrity weddings, including Betty Grable; Zsa Zsa Gabor; Judy Garland; Mickey Rooney; Dudley Moore; etc… The Little Church of the West was also the setting for Elvis and Ann-Margret's wedding in the movie "Viva Las Vegas." The historic chapel is listed in the National Register of Historical Places and has married more than 100,000 couples since its opening 60 years ago (Anderton, 99). The Huntridge Theatre, built in 1945, was one of the city's premier movie houses, having hosted Jerry Lewis, Abbott and Costello, Marlene Dietrich and Vincent Price over the years (Schmid, 201). Until recently, it has been one of the city’s top venues to see live music. This building id also one of the city's few Moderne-style buildings still standing and is listed on both the National Register of Historical Places and the state Register of Historic Places. The United States' best-known theater architects of the time, Los Angeles-based S. Charles Lee designed the Huntridge. Finally, the Sahara, built in 1952, is one of last remnants of Las Vegas' golden age. When it opened, the Sahara boasted the area's first Olympic-size swimming pool. In its heyday, the Sahara featured Hollywood's biggest celebrities, including Cary Grant, Grace Kelly and Spencer Tracy and entertainers Mae West, Don Rickles, Liza Minelli and Sonny and Cher. The re-built Sahara was designed by Martin Stern, Jr., who went on to design a significant part of Las Vegas' skyline, including the skyscraper and convention center at the Sahara Hotel and the old MGM Grand Hotel, which became Bally's. Stern was part of the ‘second generation’ of Las Vegas architects who realized that as land became more expensive, the sprawling motel-like developments of earlier years no longer made economic sense. He and contemporaries like Wayne McAllister adapted by building hotels with towers that replaced neon signs as the defining elements. Using the Googie style of architecture he helped to pioneer in Los Angeles, “they replaced the sleek and low-slung intimacy of lounges, manicured lawns with rambling motel wings with private box balconies overlooking the pool with its beauties, replaced with a bigger, bolder and self-confident look of a legitimate corporate business,'' Peter Michel wrote on the Web site of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Stern designed the Sahara Hotel's first skyscraper (14 stories) in 1959, its convention center in 1967, a 342-room high-rise addition in 1977 and a 625-room high-rise addition in 1979. He became known for his attention to the sort of details that make money, such as the tower with the top floor wider than those below, to accommodate luxury suites with panoramic views. Much of the success of Las Vegas architecture is owed to the fact that the city was starting from a blank slate in middle of the twentieth century. The city first established its identity as a tourist based frontier town and then was able to build itself in its own image. The city adopted the architectural styles and the cultural trends of the 1950s and has continually reinvented itself to stay at the forefront of the American list of destinations. Dubai has had perhaps, an even easier track to success. It has built itself in Las Vegas’ image. Dubai is a city that has only come of age in the last 20 years. It has sustained a monumental level of growth since 1990. Like Las Vegas, Dubai for a long time was nothing more than a way station in the midst of a trade route. The discovery of oil has given it great wealth and consequently, Dubai city has created itself into a world leader among modern playgrounds. Dubai’s history is not nearly as ancient as some its Arab neighbors. The Bani Yas tribe, led by the Maktoum Family, settled at the mouth of the creek in 1833 (Schmid, 109). The creek was a natural harbour and Dubai soon became a regional center for the fishing, pearling and sea trade. By the turn of the 20th century Dubai was a successful port. In the 1950s the creek began to silt, a result perhaps of the increasing number of ships that used it. Dubai decided to have the waterway dredged. It was an ambitious, costly, and visionary project which resulted in increased volumes of cargo handling in Dubai. Ultimately it strengthened Dubai's position as a major trading and re-export hub. When oil was discovered in 1966, Sheikh Rashid utilized the oil revenues to spur infrastructure development in Dubai, namely schools, hospitals, roads, a modern telecommunications network, etc … A runway extension that could accommodate any type of aircraft was implemented at the Airport. The largest man-made harbor in the world was constructed at Jebel Ali, and a free zone was created around the port. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Dubai took a strategic decision to emerge as a major international-quality tourism destination (Karin). Dubai is now a ‘world city’ with 7 star hotels, remarkable architecture and world-class entertainment and sporting events. Its remarkable architecture has the world talking. The sheer size of Dubai architecture is staggering. The Structures soar into the sky, one after the other. The size of the projects is matched by their gaudiness. While Dubai is quickly developing a reputation as the burgeoning mega city of the Arab world, it is receiving much criticism that Las Vegas does not. At the beginning of this next decade, relatively tiny Dubai -- it's smaller than Canada's Prince Edward Island, and has a population of about 1.6 million citizens -- is to be home to an astonishing number of superlative architectural projects (Chakarova). These include Earth's tallest skyscraper, the first luxury underwater hotel, and a man-made archipelago of private, and residential islands that will resemble a map of the world when seen from above. Dubai is home to world's tallest building, the sleek and spectacular Burj Dubai, designed by American firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). When it was completed in 2009, it replaced Taiwan's pagoda-shaped Taipei 101 from its roost as Earth's tallest. This is the first time since the 12th century that the world’s tallest buidling resided in Arabia. Another Western firm, Britain's Foster & Partners, has designed One Central Park, a mixed-use, eco-friendly building 80 stories high. One Central Park was the world's highest residential apartment building when it opened its doors in 2008. And Singapore's DP Architects have designed the 1,000-store, 5-million-square-foot Dubai Mall, which will was the biggest shopping center on the planet when it opened in 2006 There are also number of entirely innovative architectural achievements in Dubai. The Palm Islands is a set of man-made resort islands shaped to look like a palm tree when seen from a jet, which opened in 2006. In 2006, the same developer also completed The World, a series of manufactured residential islands that, when seen from above, resemble smaller versions of the seven continents. Dubai’s and the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa is 828 m (2,717 ft) tall. Construction began on 21 September 2004, with the exterior of the structure completed on 1 October 2009. The building officially opened on 4 January 2010. The building is part of the 2 km2 (490-acre) flagship development called Downtown Burj Khalifa at the "First Interchange" along Sheikh Zayed Road, near Dubai's main business district. The tower's architecture and engineering were performed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill of Chicago (Schmid, 101). Adrian Smith, who started his own firm in 2006, was the chief architect, and Bill Baker was the chief structural engineer for the project.The total cost for the Burj Khalifa project was about US$1.5 billion; and for the entire new "Downtown Dubai", US$20 billion. The project's completion coincided with a worldwide economic slump and overbuilding, and it has been described as the latest in [a] string of monuments to architectural vacancy. With Dubai itself mired in a deep financial crisis that forced it to seek repeated billion-dollar bailouts from its oil-rich neighbor Abu Dhabi, the opening ceremony and surprise renaming of the tower to Burj Khalifa, after UAE President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has been viewed by observers as an attempt to boost confidence in Dubai by showing who is backing Dubai. The design of Burj Khalifa is derived from patterning systems embodied in Islamic architecture (Schmid, 78). According to the structural engineer Bill Baker of Burj Khalifa, the building's design incorporates cultural and historical elements particular to the region. The Y-shaped plan is ideal for residential and hotel usage, with the wings allowing maximum outward views and inward natural light. The design architect Adrian Smith has said the triple-lobed footprint of the building was inspired by the flower Hymenocallis. The tower is composed of three elements arranged around a central core. As the tower rises from the flat desert base, setbacks occur at each element in an upward spiraling pattern, decreasing the cross section of the tower as it reaches toward the sky. There are 27 terraces in Burj Khalifa. At the top, the central core emerges and is sculpted to form a finishing spire. A Y-shaped floor plan maximizes views of the Persian Gulf. Viewed from above or from the base, the form also evokes the onion domes of Islamic architecture. During the design process, engineers rotated the building 120 degrees from its original layout to reduce stress from prevailing winds. At its tallest point, the tower sways a total of 1.5 m (4.9 ft). Much of the criticism of Dubai architecture stems from its lack of a personal touch and its race to out-do itself (Sherwood). The city has the look and feel of fiction, like a landscape inside a computer game. Bizarre objects pop up at odd intervals, like the pyramid-shaped Raffles hotel or the local answer to the Arc de Triomphe, the Gate, at the Dubai International Financial Centre, which resembles a monumental Parsons table. And visible from all over town is the improbable beanstalk silhouette of Burj Dubai, not scheduled to top out until September 2009, but already the world’s tallest skyscraper. When completed, it will be more than 2,600 feet tall. As it turns out, some of the astonishing sights people hope to see simply do not exist and likely never will. Missing in action is the Dynamic Tower, an 80-story building in which each individual floor revolves 360 degrees—like a quavering stack of hotel cocktail lounges—and generates energy as it turns. The project, designed by Florence-based architect David Fisher, hasn’t broken ground. Another dazzler, Hydropolis, an underwater hotel originally scheduled for completion in late 2007, remains unbuilt and underfunded. Indeed, Dubai, fiercely sunny, dusty, and sprawling, can be every bit as disillusioning as Las Vegas when the neon signs are off. Most of the newer buildings hew close to the Sheikh Zayed strip, a straight line stretching all the way to Abu Dhabi, originally laid through uninhabited desert. Novelty high-rises face off across six lanes of traffic like opposing pieces in a wacky chess set. But the future Dubai is also feverishly under construction on sites well removed from Sheikh Zayed, deep in the desert and out in the middle of the Persian Gulf. While some of the novelties may never get beyond their sexy renderings, what is being built is often even more astonishing. There are developments under way the size of whole cities, like Waterfront, an urban habitat for 1.5 million people, with a Manhattan-inspired downtown planned with the help of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. And there’s Bawadi, a six-mile-long entertainment district with 51 new hotels, including Asia Asia, predicted to be the world’s largest, with 6,500 rooms. And there’s Business Bay, a new central district with 220 skyscrapers going up all at once. Las Vegas and Dubai, both are cities built on present dreams of big time future dollars. It is easy to see how common sense, restraint and tact can lost in the type and amount of buildings that go up. As much as the two cities mirror each other, public reaction does not. The world finds Las Vegas charming and exciting, if a bit excessive. The world seems to declare Dubai and its architecture obnoxious with regards to the size, tackiness and frequency of its newer structures. Bibliography Anderson, Kurt. “Las Vegas, USA,” Time, Jan 10, 1995. Anderton, Frances and John Chase. Las Vegas: The Success of Excess. Ellipsis, London, 1997. Banham, Reyner. “Las Vegas,” Los Angeles Times West Magazine, November 8, 1970. Chung, Su Kim. Las Vegas Then and Now. Thunder Bay Press. San Diego, California: 2005. Dunne, John Gregory. Vegas: a Memoir of a Dark Season, Random House, New York, 1974. Findlay, John. People of Chance: Gambling in American Society from Jamestown to Las Vegas. Oxford University Press, New York, 1986. Schmid, Heiko. Economy of Fascination: Dubai and Las Vegas as Themed Urban Landscapes, Berlin, Stuttgart 2009 Smith, John M. Dubai The Maktoum Story, Norderstedt 2007 Karin, Luiza (September, 1999). "Modernity and tradition in Dubai architecture by Luiza Karim". alshindagah.com. http://www.alshindagah.com/september99/architecture.htm. Retrieved 19 April 2010. Paher, Stanley. Las Vegas, as it Began—as it Grew. Las Vegas: Nevada Publications, 1971. Pastier, John. “The Architecture of Escapism: Disney World and Las Vegas.” American Institute of Architects Journal, December 1978. Pearce, Dick. “Pleasure Palaces.” Harper’s, February 1955. Pearl, Ralph. Las Vegas Is My Beat. Secaucus, N.J.: Lyle Stuart, 1973. Sherwood, Seth (December 9, 2007). "Clubs Bloom in the Desert". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/travel/09party.html?_r=1&ex=1212987600&en=f13e9687f3c7e636&ei=5087&excamp=GGTRdubaitravel&WT.srch=1&WT.mc_ev=click&WT.mc_id=TR-S-E-GG-NA-CT-dubai_travel. Retrieved 23 April 2010 Chakarova, Mimi. Dubai: Night Secrets, PBS Frontline, 13 September 2007 Karin, Luiza (September, 1999). "Modernity and tradition in Dubai architecture by Luiza Karim". alshindagah.com. http://www.alshindagah.com/september99/architecture.htm. Retrieved 19 April 2010. Read More