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    CHEAP, FAS N EASY

    America is a very poor lens through which to view Las Vegas, while Las Vegas is a wonderful lens through which to viewAmerica.1

    Since the Second World War, the Sunbelt cities in the south of the United States ofAmerica have experienced the fastest economic and population growth in the country. Tisregion that stretches across 15 states, presents a very particular condition where sustainedgrowth has transformed much of its urban and metropolitan landscapes, demographics and

    economies. Cities such as Las Vegas in Nevada and Phoenix in Arizona have transformed fromdesert towns to large cities with sizable metropolitan extensions and diverse constituenciesand populations. aking a cue from the art and cultural critic: Dave Hickey, if Vegas is infact, the perfect lens to measure general American culture, the studio wagered that perhapsit could also operate as an appropriate lens to measure and view Americas dominant modesof urbanization in general.

    1 A Home in the Neon by Dave Hickey in Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy (California, Art Press Issues, 1997)

    If by 2030, 50% of Americas built environment will come to be defined byconstructions built no earlier than the year 2000 2, it would be reasonable to assumethat, due to the speed and scale of this anticipated construction, a significant portionof this urbanization will unfold through the deployment of standard building types.Americas growing metropolitan regions are becoming defined more and more by thecheap, fast and easy. While the profession and disciplines preoccupation with the specificand singular have been the prevailing concern of general architectural research, in theViv(e) Las Vegas option studio at Cornell University, we chose to pursue an explicit andfocused research into the typical models of architectural and urban development found

    within the rapidly expanding metropolises in Americas Southwest. Te studio wasconscious in its attempt to circumvent the disciplines obsession with the exceptionaland the authentic, which for us has consequently sponsored an unbalanced focus on theaspects of our built environment that, are quiet literally: exceptions.

    2 Ricky Burdett & Deyan Sudjic, The Endless City (London, Phaidon Press, 2007)

    SPECULAIVE URBANIZAIONS: VIV(E) LAS VEGASSUDIO PROFESSORS: LEYRE ASENSIO VILLORIA + DAVID SYN CHEE MAHStudents: Bogeng Chen, Molly Chiang, Savina Kalkandzhieva, aewoo Kang, Juhyun Kim, ien Ling, Elizabeth Munson, NamsukOh, Manasy Pandey, Hillary Pinnington, Jeremy Siegel, Koren Sin, Tea Von Geldern, Siyuang Zhang, Milena Zindovic

    Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas01 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,

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    Given that a majority of Americas (sub)urbanism will be componondescript and prosaic, we could also presuppose that much of the posocial (as well as private) lives will be facilitated within generic arcand urban types. Te studio approached the study of contemporary metropolitan growth, particularly within Americas Sunbelt region, by fothe typical developer led projects that have come to define the major coof this model of urbanization. Consequently, as a studio we became inturbanizations replicable systems and prototypes and we chose to revisitpreoccupations and ambitions for identifying or redefining the buildingthe contemporary metropolis. Tis ambition was developed further by

    an inter-disciplinary relationship between architectural strategies and mof landscape, infrastructural and urban planning. By measuring exproposed developments against the conceptions of organization andeconomies of efficiency we hoped to understand, engage and operate onmetropolitan growth within its own terms and to redirect the modalicurrent deployment towards various other qualitative effects.

    For our research on the models of contemporary urbanizatiSunbelt we opted to produce different understandings of replicable, coand pliable metropolitan matter. If so much of what constitutes conurbanization will be new, fast and easy, a considered engagement and reconof these banal environments could perhaps deliver both a poetic and osubstrate to a large majority of our contemporary built environments. Radopting a critical or oppositional stance, by reconsidering and post-pthe commonplace and banal, our built environment may be imbued w

    and implication that remains unclaimed and unseen and just might proqualitative differences to construct new constituencies of other social anlifestyles.

    LIFESYLED

    In parallel to our study of contemporary metropolitan growVegas, the studio chose to consciously investigate the relationship betwarchitectural and territorial infrastructures and the engineering of whatidentified as the lifestyle market. o some degree, the emerging pof commercialized lifestyle communities and markets could be symptodescription of our contemporary social and political milieu articulated byGiddens notion of life-politics.2 Certainly the identification of differthat have allowed planned residential communities to emerge marketed tofrom retiree to fire arms enthusiast demographics indexes a general sub

    towards a form of collective association based on lifestyle choices.

    1 Niciolas Bourriaud, Postproduction, Culture As Screenplay, How Art Reprograms The World, (Berlin, N& Sternberg, 2002)

    2 For Giddens, our late modern social and political landscapes have allowed us to bypass emancipatory poand collective identication.

    For him, self identity and actualization has for many become a matter of life choices rather than life chances and thus

    life-politics or

    lifestyles.

    Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas03 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,

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    Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas05 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,

    However, this idea of a sub-politics composed ofnon-partisan, individual life choices has been challenged byagonist critics such as Chantall Mouffe for its overoptimisticdepiction of a society no longer structured by social and classdivisions.1 It could be argued that what may be presentedas a society emancipated enough to able to deliberate on lifepolitics in fact has, in the case of Las Vegas metropolitanarea, manifested itself through a landscape that stillactualizes persistent class and social divisions. In Vegas,the metropolitan landscape could easily be described by DeCauter and Dehaenes illustration of the twenty first centurycity as a dualization, between on one hand the archipelagoof secured, well connected capsules and on the other hand

    the ubiquitous periphery

    2

    . Te illusion presented in LasVegas real estate boom of a more democratic and generallyaccessible notion of individual property and a good life hasin fact proven to be far less inclusive i n the aftermath of thecredit crunch. In the studio, we endeavored to rethink LasVegas current metropolitan extension in light of this crisisand to speculate on the capacity for a re-structuring ofVegas generic urbanization to produce other life-worlds.

    MEROPOLIAN LESSONS FROM LAS VEGASTe growing significance of developments such

    as shopping malls, lifestyle centers and master-plannedcommunities as well as tourist resorts in both facilitatingand expressing contemporary social life has prompted

    Peter Sloterdijk to describe them as the pluralized spatialcreations of the modern and postmodern.3Often contraryto traditional conceptions of public s pace, these spaces resultfrom the citys new development patterns and protocols aswell as a social and political condition that Sloterdijk hasdescribed as connected isolations.

    In Las Vegas, the proliferation of islands, masscontainers and hyper-architectures4are prevalent trendsfor accommodating these different lifestyles. Temed,spectacular and illusionist, hyper-architecture is theproduct of the architect as experience engineer within theexperience economy. Just like Coney Islands relationshipto Manhattan as an in cubator of Metropolitan prototypes,described in Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas, much

    of the strategies and technologies of Las Vegas themed1 Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, (London, New York, Verso, 2005)2 Lieven De Cauter & Michiel Dehaene, Mediations On Razor Wire: A Plea ForPara-Architecture in Visionary Power: Producing The Contemporary

    City, (Rotterdam, NAI Publishers, 2007)

    3 Bettina Funcke, Against Gravity Interview with Peter Sloterdijk, Bookforum, (Feb/Mar 2005)

    4 Lieven De Cauter & Michiel Dehaene, Mediations On Razor Wire: A Plea ForPara-Architecture in Visionary Power: Producing The Contemporary

    City, (Rotterdam, NAI Publishers, 2007)

    and scripted lifestyle residential developments have had aprevious life incubating along the strip. Tese models ofdevelopments that are subsequently exported to the rest ofthe world highlight the hybridization of the banal and typicalwith technologies of the fantastic, culminating in numerousincarnations of metropolitan hyper-architectures.

    Such developments are largely ignored as territories

    for investigation by the discipline, having been relegatedto the realm of the mundane and purely commercial. Ifaccording to Koolhaas, the zero degree architecture of thetypical plan (which exemplifies the generic) has provided uswith the multiple platforms of 20th Century democracy5;

    it would seem likely that in the coming decades, giventhe current nature of development in our contemporarymetropolises, the social life of Americas citizens may verywell remain facilitated and represented by similarly genericeveryday envelopes.

    After a period of research and evaluation that included

    a field trip to Las Vegas, the studio identified major themes andareas of investigation that framed their proposed interventionswithin Las Vegas metropolitan area. Tese themes address thedifferent scales at which architectural and urban mechanismsstructure the built metropolitan environment and lifestylesof Las Vegas population. Tese themes were: 1) subdivision,2) Las Vegas versions of communities and neighborhoods,3) infrastructure, 4) the house as commodity and 5) the

    blank shed as social container. Trough an informedunderstanding of these issues, the proposals operated onLas Vegas current modalities of urbanization as a means tosystematically speculate on and rile new effects, new qualities,new environments, new atmospheres, new microclimates,new ecologies, new constituencies and ultimately new modelsfor the metropolis.

    5 Rem Koolhaas, Typical Plan in R. Koolhaas, and B. Mau, 1995, S,M,L,XL, MonacelliPress, New York

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    5/18Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas09 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,

    2 COMMUNIIES & NEIGHBOURHOODS

    A significant distinction in Las Vegas urbanization can be s een in the differences between life-style master planned communities and generic neighborhoods. Disparities in the distributionin quantity and quality of amenities as well as density are determined by different notions of valueand efficiency that correspond to these differing models of development. Te prioritization ofmaximizing the number of subdivisions in neighborhoods contrasts with the emphasis on valueadding amenities and manicured spaces in master planned communities that operate as the propsfor constructing atmospheres for marketable lifestyles. Within Las Vegas subdivisions, one candiscern a switch in the economy of efficiencies applied to neighborhoods and communities, wherein neighborhoods, maintaining efficient and optimal density is primary while in the communities,

    value creation through landscape features as well as a carefully engineered retreat from the surround-ing urban field is a priority for generating value.

    As it is practiced, the politics of lifestyle communities is predicated on a decision and agreement to

    subscribe to a mode of living that is shared by a particular demographic and is enforced and man-aged by homeowners associations. Tis tendency allows for the balkanization of Las Vegas citizensinto consumer clusters of self same age groups and income brackets, with the perceived benefits ofinsured property values and security. In Las Vegas, much of conscious social practice is determinedby affordability.

    But what are the other measures of value that could frame the assembling of n ew communities andneighborhoods? Other collective concerns could begin to inflect the assembly of these develop-ments. If we are to address the inefficiencies and wastefulness of platting patterns that neglect the

    compass, landscape or prevailing ecology it is precisely the problems associated with the environ-ment, landscape and ecology as well as a reconsideration of what constitute desirable lifestyles thatcould become actual matters of concern which redirect our community and neighborhood values.

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    6/18Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas11 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,

    3 - INFRASRUCURE

    Often in Las Vegas and sprawl urbanization, infrastructure produces certain redundan-cies or alternatively it produces significant shortfalls. In these contexts, it is rare that infrastruc-ture (often seen as the assurance of efficiency) operates without producing additional flow on ef-fects that are either problematic or are opportunities. We propose to investigate these additionaleffects of infrastructure as opportunities to rethink their range of performance and capacity forrestructuring urbanization.

    Infrastructural conditions, ranging from the inefficiency and waste associated with as-pects of highway constructions, the excessive scale of car parking requirements to the redun-dant yet inadequate water management and flood control in frastructure in Las Vegas were usedas generators and opportunities for their alternative deployment towards other ambitions andeconomies of efficiency.

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    Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas15 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,

    5 HE BLANK SHED AS SOCIAL CONAINER

    Las Vegas retail and social spaces outside of the strip and downtown are primarilyaccommodated within two building or development types: namely strip malls and big boxstores. Both are the epitome of the loose fit, generic blank type. Te flexibility of thesetypes is tied to redundancy and neutrality. It is a general supposition that the more neutraland redundant these buildings become, the more li kely to flexibly absorb any number ofprogramming and tenancy changes.

    Ironically, despite or perhaps because of their blankness and redundancy, (big mutebuildings framed by large on grade car parking areas), these developments exhibit a monu-mental and singular character when read against the entropy of the surrounding sea ofsubdivisions. In Las Vegas, these development types are called upon to facilitate and oftenrepresent different social, ethnic and racial groups. In Las Vegas: Chinatown is a genericstrip mall, where the representational elements of the architecture are clipped or added onto the generic strip mall organization for an instant cultural identity. For these blank types,identity is interchangeable with clip on accessories to represent both branding and cultural

    identity for amongst others: from Arbies to Starbucks to Chinese, Korean or Latino towns.In the credit crunch, just as foreclosures have left a significant number of houses and neigh-borhoods vacant, many big boxes have also failed economically and lost their tenants. Tesedevelopments even more so when vacant and unoccupied, pose a considerable blight on thegeneral metropolitan landscape and furthermore, leave many already underserviced neigh-borhoods even more isolated.

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    Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas17 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,

    VIV(E) LAS VEGAS PROPOSALS

    1, 8, 9 Hilary Pinnington & Koren Sin2 Molly Chiang, ien Line & Tea Von Geldern3 Manasi Pandey & Milena Zindovic4 Bogeng Chen & Siyuang Zhang

    5 Savina Kalkandzhieva6 Jeremy Siegel7, 10 Juhyun Kim11 aewoo Kang, Elizabeth Munson & Namsuk Oh.

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    Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas19 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,

    PROPOSAL: DE/RE DENSIFYING LAS VEGAS

    Students: Juhyun Kim & Jeremy Siegel

    PROPOSAL: DE/RE DENSIFYING LAS VEGASStudents: Juhyun Kim & Jeremy Siegel

    In Las Vegas, achieving density can be a politically significant strategy as it is one of the mainmeasures against which the feasibility for implementation of public services, infrastructureand amenities is evaluated. It is also argued that higher density within the context of LasVegas is a more sustainable form of urban development due to the inefficiency and wastethat an extensive sprawling distribution of infrastructure and amenities would entail. Overthe last couple of decades, Las Vegas has been growing at exponential rates and there are stillprojections for more considerable growth. Given the current densities associated with itsmetropolitan developments, Las Vegas will run out of space for its expansion, where the cityis framed and limited by Federal land and mountain ranges. Given these circumstances, itwould appear that Las Vegas, sooner or later, will need to start reconsidering density.

    Juhyun and Jeremy proposed the definition of new regulatory measures w ithin the PLSSgrid that define a mix of densities within Las Vegas wider metropolitan area. In Las Vegas

    two dominant models of development have tended to be practiced, the first, a concentratedand consolidated model of linearly concentrated density exemplified by the strip, the other,a low sprawl of tract housing subdivisions. In fact these two models of development can beseen as the difference between the generic suburban sprawl and an ambition for a dense andcongested downtown area spearheaded by both public and private developments that include

    MGM Grands City Center (a large development that promises a Manhattan lifestyle onVegas strip designed and delivered by Foster, Pelli, KPF, Jahn, Vinoly, Liebeskind, Gensleretc) to the Union Park development: a public private partnership.

    Working with the projection of a continuing population growth, Juhyun and Jeremy pro-pose a restructuring of these models of development where these exacerbated differences aremade to define strips/corridors of highly serviced zones (serviced by virtue of its density andcongestion as well as the corresponding public facilities and amenities that are subsequentlygranted as a result of achieving such high densities); a linear Manhattan framing majorroads, while suburban (and almost rural) low density developments may be located in a di-rectly contiguous manner. Tis organization of urban/suburban/rural densities is projectedto allow for the accommodation of these various models of development and different con-stituencies of lifestyles in close contiguous relationships.

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    Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas21 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,

    PROPOSAL: CENER PIVO CIIES & CIY DENSIFIERSStudents: Jeremy Siegel / Savina Kalkandzhieva

    Suburbia is in many ways, structured by the desire for a perceived closeness to thenatural or the rural. Its attractiveness for many are in fact the perception of a close relation-ship to an expansive landscape despite the complete artificiality of its actualizations. Both,Jeremy and Savinas projects attempt to reconcile this perception of expanse and the naturalwith the pressing needs for a more sustainable density of development.

    Jeremy and Savina chose to develop a series of urban guidelines and planning prac-tices that would put into new relationships: landscape, architecture and infrastructure toproduce in Savinas case: a coexistence and framing of the desert and in Jeremys case, aconstant relationship between houses and a perception of an expansive landscape. Both

    students engendered new guidelines and codes with the capacity to remix existing buildingtypes and infrastructure in ways that it may generate differential densities. Las Vegas cur-rent sprawling carpet of matter will be redirected into zones of high developmental density,allowing for the allocation of large areas to be reclaimed by landscape (either agricultural ordesert).

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    Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas23 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,

    PROPOSAL ZIG ZAG HOUSES

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    Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas25 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,

    PROPOSAL: ZIG ZAG HOUSESStudent: Juhyun Kim

    Following on from an impulse towards densification, Juhyun develops a new housingtype that re-structures existing suburban residential subdivisions into high density, highrise developments that retain and incorporate qualities of existing suburban lifestylesinto its organization.

    Direct car access, individual garages, vis ual privacy and front/back gardens are acceptedas features and qualitative necessities in the re-mixing of the organizational logics ofsuburban tract home subdivisions into vertical building typologies. A resulting sec-tional zig zag figure emerges out of this negotiation between different view and privacyparameters together with larger scale concerns for connectivity, structural stability andfabric differentiation.

    Incorporating organizational and sequence logics from existing tract home models,Juhyun translates what were widely understood by the market as bonus rooms (gyms,home theater rooms) and added features or optional extras (such as swimming pools)

    into consolidated communal amenities. Swimming pools, Jacuzzis and tennis courtsbecome collective programs within publicized backyards. A new model of community(the Las Vegas variety) emerges where a new city fabric and public realm grows in theneighborhoods backyards. In the tradition of urban reformation projects that offer pro-cedures for restructuring existing urban fabrics into alternative urban models, the projectoffers a protocol of the (sub)urban reformation of typical; suburban subdivisions intonew variations of high density developments.

    PROPOSAL: PARK VEGAS

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    Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas27 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,

    Te scale of car parking structures and infrastructures are considerable and of-ten monumental in Las Vegas. Given this general construction culture that is wellacquainted with the problems of assembling large parking buildings, ien, Tea andMolly developed a new hybrid building type that conflates a literal interpretation of theinfamous Life Magazine skyscraper diagram with multi storey parking structures. Teteam proposed an infrastructure for parking suburban homes, multiplying the groundon which these standard products may be distributed.

    Te mediation between various technical determinations such as turning circles,natural lighting and ventilation as well as lot efficiency were used as the pretexts for gen-erating more and more types of hybrid structures, assembling a new model of interweav-

    ing high rise neighborhood/communities. As a result of this new density, motivated bythe pressing need to increase density within Vegas growing suburban field, ien, Tea

    PROPOSAL: PARK VEGASStudents: Molly Chiang, ien Ling & Tea Von Geldern

    and Mollys proposal in fact projects a highly collective form of living environ-ment that conflates a high concentration of mixed uses, amenities, public groundstogether with a perversely efficient in frastructure for the proliferation of housinglots. While departing from a mock capitulation to Las Vegas suburban and carworshipping culture, the project incongruously produces a model of a communitythat could be described as urban, collective and even pedestrian friendly. Inciden-tally, the projects plausibility and marketability during the course of reviews hadbeen endorsed by a Las Vegas real estate agent, prompting optimism within thestudio in the possibility for pairing visionary urban/architectural ambitions withLas Vegas real estate values.

    PROPOSAL: DUNES AND MOUNAINS

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    Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas29 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,

    PROPOSAL: DUNES AND MOUNAINSStudents: Bogeng Chen & Siyuan Zhang / Manasi Pandey & Milena Zindovic

    Bogeng/Siyuan and Manasi/Milena both attempt toreconfigure the procedures for producing subdivisions within

    the PLSS grid in order to adapt to the influences of specif-ic environmental and ecological factors. Te harnessing ofprevailing winds, shading, and solar exposure provoked thereorganization and rethinking of the modalities for definingnew mixed use developments at both the architectural andurban scales as well as deliberately producing engineered mi-croclimates that allow for temporal reconfigurations to thepatterns of occupation in Las Vegas desert landscapes. Ad-aptations of existing building types imported from the Strip,together with new protocols for generating subdivisions al-lowed for the restructuring of residential developments to ac-commodate and further extend existing ecological zones andhabitats, generating new assemblages of humans and non-humans1

    1 Bruno Latour & Peter Weibel, Making Things Public, Atmospheres of Democracy,(Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 2005)

    PROPOSAL: HYDROMORPHING LAS VEGAS

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    Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas31 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,

    PROPOSAL: HYDROMORPHING LAS VEGASStudents: aewoo Kang, Elizabeth Muson & Namsuk Oh

    Despite being located in a desert, Las Vegas does on occasion suffer flash flooding. It is also in dan-ger of losing its capacity to sustain adequate water supply for its urbanization. Tis is currently mitigated bya water management and flood control infrastructural network that is simultaneously redundant and ineffi-cient. Te hydrological infrastructure in its existing configuration is largely determined by a linear efficiency

    that addresses problems of flood management and water distribution through a brute consolidation of largeinfrastructural elements, insensitively inserted within the territory. Elizabeth, Namsuk and aewoo proposeto re-structure Vegas hydrological infrastructure into a distributed network throughout the metropolitanterritory that minimizes the inefficiency and waste that is currently a result of long cycles of distribution andthe consequent water supply losses due to exposure and evaporation.

    As a result, alternative developmental models of communities and neighborhoods are developed

    that adapt to a morphology driven by this reconfigured hydro-infrastructure. Water is collected anddistributed as a localized and distributed network, while also producing new artificial environmentsfor residential as well as commercial development. Archipelagoes of unique and discrete islands are a

    potential result of this new infrastructural logic. Te hydro-infrastructure in itself due to the immediatetechnical need for constant shade (to prevent evaporation) constructs a network of novel public land-scapes that acts to connect rather than separate each island while engineering new microclimatic oaseswithin the metropolitan field.

    PROPOSAL: BIG-BOX HOUSING

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    Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas33 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,

    Students: Hillary Pinnington & Koren Sin

    Hillary and Koren project a new residential community within Vegas aban-doned big box developments. o recycle these big boxes, they generate an interiorurbanism imported from the strip (examples such as the New York, New York, Paris

    and the Venetian casinos simulate city fabrics within its interior spaces) that remixesthe market expectations of typical Vegas communities into new forms for collectiveliving.

    Front yards, backyards and mechanisms for maintaining privacy are reor-ganized to create an interior landscape with gradated degrees of public and privaterealms, all sealed and framed within a climatically controlled envelope. Tis pro-jected community exploits its interiority at both conceptual and pragmatic levels,with an intentional community that, because its retreat to an interior, are able tore-imagine a much more collective form of living.

    Te weather sealed community is cheap and fast precluding the expectationsthat these would need to be financed and operate as high end exclusive enclaves.Without needing to perform relative to exterior climatic factors, construction couldbe of lower specifications and the already prevalent strategy for populating the large

    exposed roofs of these building types with solar panels would curb energy and longterm operational costs. Consequently, the assembly of cheap and easy communitiesproposes an optimistic vision of living and thinking within the box, re-inhabiting thefortuitous monuments of suburbia.

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    CREDIS AND DAA

    Project itle: Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las VegasContributors: Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee MahEditor: Yoonjee Koh

    Special thanks to:

    For their help in Las Vegas: Arthur Gensler and J.F.Finn of Gensler and Associates,Robert Dorgan and Glenn Nowak of UNLV, Geoff Rhodes of Lake Las Vegas, Margo

    Wheeler of Te Las Vegas Planning and Development Department, Dave HickeyFor their participation in reviews: Lonn Combs, Alastair Gill, Veronika Schmid, AnnForsyth, David Saloman, Mike Silver.

    Professors Leyre Asensio Villoria + David Syn Chee Mah / Speculative Urbanizations: Viv(e) Las Vegas35 ASSOCIATION VOLUME 4 / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art,