design spend. It’s a winning recipe that Strip and offStrip developers have used ever since. “These resorts were not randomly thrown together,” says architecture critic Alan Hess, author of “Viva Las Vegas: After-Hours Architecture.” “Stern and Rissman very consciously used the elements of design — space, color, sound, circulation and sequences — to optimize the visitor experience and optimize
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owner profits. These designs were intended to keep visitors inside and keep them interested.” Gone to m o r r ow Architecturally, the work of Stern and Rissman was only meant to last a short while. Las Vegas, after all, prides itself on invention and re-invention. The commercial nature of entertainment architecture requires as much. “The architecture of the Strip is more of a
performance art than a static sculpture,” says Nowak, who coordinates UNLV’s hospitality design program. “You can tell that most kitsch was designed to last only a short while.” Rissman and Stern consequently concocted work that embraced the freedom, whimsy and kitsch of car culture with over-sized, sculptural neon displays signs that Tom Wolfe once called a “staple design of the American landscape.” Families were embracing a new sense of liberation and adventure made possible by the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, which had begun construction in 1956. Travel fueled urban sprawl and the birth of the suburb. It also spurred new roadside development. (Rissman designed most of Primm, Nevada, including Whiskey Pete’s, the Primadonna, and Buffalo Bill’s.) Car travel was cheap and easy, and fueled bigger resorts that served more visitors. “Roadside America changed the nature of the Strip. More attention was paid to traffic patterns, vehicle access, parking garages, and how buildings were oriented on the site,” Michel says. “The style of automobile culture influenced resort façades and their appearance.” Both architects embraced the mercurial, ephemeral nature of Las Vegas, with a design aesthetic that characterizes modern urban entertainment and recreational space. Rissman, for instance, designed the Flamingo Hilton Hotel’s white-and-pink-glass concrete towers, built over several phases from 1976 to 1993 for Kerkorian, who was a patron to both men. Rissman, in fact, added room wings to Stern’s original International Hotel. “Both men were constantly tearing down and rebuilding each other’s work,” Hess says. “Renovating and redesigning existing work was their bread and butter.” The city’s rapid transformation and renewal is famously chronicled in Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour’s “Learning From Las Vegas.” The landmark 1972 book calls Vegas “the archetype of the commercial strip … at its purest and most intense”; it champions the city’s sociological responsiveness to common tastes and values, while simultaneously eschewing heroic, self-aggrandizing architectural monuments. Although most of Rissman and Stern’s work has been razed and built anew, their influence remains. Both men died in 2001. The pair trained the next generation of Las Vegas architects, including Joel Bergman (Mirage, Trump Las Vegas) who got his start in Stern’s office. Stern and Rissman’s imagination and creative process still resonate anew through UNLV’s free digital archive. Perhaps best of all? You can’t implode jpegs.