Signs of Life: Las Vegas

Abstract

This studio considered the potential for ornament in contemporary landscape architecture. More specifically, we investigated design methodologies based on ornamental configurations as a technique for deriving spatial and topographic organizations. The goal was to recoup ornament in terms of its traditional definition as a mechanism for display, as well as to reject the modernist opposition between ornament and function. Students made proposals for a public landscape for a sixty-one-acre site in downtown Las Vegas.