The Decreative Impulse: The Last Page of Learning from Las Vegas

This paper delves into the ‘decreative impulse’ briefly mentioned on the last page of Learning from Las Vegas, unraveling its roots within the disruption of modernism initiated by Venturi and Scott Brown and revitalizing decreation’s disruptive capacity. Tracing a chain of evidence through archives and intellectual connections, the author traces the source of the reference to Venturi, connecting his exposure to New Criticism and teachings of Jean Labatut back to Simone Weil’s theological decreation, transformed by Wallace Stevens. Shifting from historical inquiry to theoretical projection, the author proposes Weil’s call to undo ego as a potential response to challenges to the profession posed by AI integration, climate change, and social justice. While Venturi gently pushed conventions, truly ‘Decreationist architecture’ needs more radical undoing of the profession. This is embodied in contemporary examples such as new Japanese metabolic urbanism and experimental preservation. These resonate with Weil’s concept of generative restraint. The unexpected discovery, in a study sparked by ‘60s disruptors via a book on the Las Vegas strip, is not more neon and spectacle in the desert, but the ascetic ideas of a French mystic – underscoring the potency of interdisciplinary disruptions across criticism, design and religion. Weil’s “less” is no bore” but rather a door opening new architectural possibilities.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.112.52

Volume Editors
Germane Barnes & Blair Satterfield

ISBN
978-1-944214-45-6