11.11.19: symbol dominates space
I am taking an online reading group course, "The Digital Transformation of Physical Space," and am perusing through the book, Learning from Las Vegas: an analysis of the Las Vegas Strip Mall. Statements like how Las Vegas is an exercise of "architecture of communication over space," "symbol dominates space" make sense: indeed, Las Vegas became a territory suited to drivers, with neon-lights, bright, startling signage designating the function of space in an easy-to-read manner for someone who may be traveling at a relatively fast pace by car.
It occurs to me how Las Vegas, NV, is the same place as Breezewood, PA, whose image has become something of a meme online, is the same place as East Brunswick, NJ, where I spent a decade of my childhood. I remember first hearing of such a place, "East Brunswick," and trying to scroll through my rolodex of spatial associations, finally hitting upon a memory I thought was appropriate, "Ma, is that the place that Route 18 cuts through? The place we were a couple weeks ago for Black Friday?"
My earliest association with my new hometown was a distinct strip of highway featuring dozens and dozens of signs, on both sides of highway, demarcating strip malls, secondhand freight-furniture stores, fast food joints, premium mediocre family dining venues such as Applebee's and Perkins, and bulk-buy stores featuring hot deals for suburban families (Sam's Club). I had somehow picked up, at a young age, that in Central New Jersey, seemingly gold-ridden strips of commercial highway carve out spaces of importance for the adults in my life.
This awareness of signage occurred even prior to the move. For some reason, one of the most prominent symbols I carry for the apartment I spent the first half of my childhood in is simply the bold sign sitting outside the lego-brick complex in which our home was but a mere unit. I would run around on that front lawn, with a bubble wand in hand, and then abruptly get cut off by the blockage imposed by this fussy sign. I would spend a while simply peering into it, memorizing the language that glowed through the plastic pane, swearing I would never forget the baptized name of our home. I would fixate on the all the dead flies buried behind those plastic panes, how the summer mosquitoes would pathetically glom towards their own trap. I would run my fingers along the edges of the plastic panes and scrape up all the residual grime that appeared deceptively more translucent than it was on my fingers.
I wonder what such a landscape tells a child about the world. My Breezewood hometown in which I approached and completed adolescence did not have the charm of a decaying rust-belt town, with plenty of safe-bet opportunities for trespassing on old fire-escape or rooftops, nor the crime or dialectic of danger found in small town America, boundaries that provide an opportunity for play. A certain bubble of safety and listlessness permeated the symbolic language of my suburban hometown. There were no possibilities for exploring an autonomous relationship to a space; everything was prematurely baptized, labelled, stitched together with street-sign names and bounded by the storefronts and their brands which our parents so lovingly spoke of.
At least in our old home, the apartment, I had the fortune of visiting the Princeton University campus with my parents on certain weekends, a tourist spot for any relatives who happened to stay for a weekend. Perhaps the architecture, old-money handcrafted buildings, arcs gracing entrances to buildings, mystical corners and nooks, and its visible yet insidious implications and consequences for the people and culture of that place, alone informed my long (and incorrectly) held infatuation with higher-ed. I do believe that architecture has a duty to the human condition.