ARISTOTELIAN RHETORIC AND MIMESIS IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN: “LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS” CASE STUDIES OF THE “DUCK”, THE “DECORATED SHED”, AND THE “GUILD HOUSE”

Abstract

In Learning from Las Vegas (1972), Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and the student Steven Izenour propose the study of an architecture oriented to the linguistic persuasion. In conjunction with nine architecture students and four urban planning students, those involved set out to analyze the city’s urban form through the “ornamental-symbolic elements” of the Strip Street, one of the major thoroughfares in Las Vegas. From this analysis, two patterns that focus in communication emerge: the “Duck” type, in which the construction takes on a symbolic form linked to its use, and the “Decorated shed” type, in which the form of the building is separated from its main communication. With the two models defined, the authors compare the communicational effectiveness of the “Crawford Manor”, a building that seeks originality, with the “Guild House”, an asylum that was designed by Venturi and Scott Brown and that applies both the ideas of the “Decorated Shed” model and expands it into different layers of communication. In this article, we propose a discussion about the persuasive capacity of these models and the two buildings assigned, using the strategies already studied and raised by Aristotle in his works, such as Rhetoric and Poetic Art, complementing the latter with other works on visual rhetoric. We’ll also carry on a discussion about the possibilities of the use the rhetorical art during the design process. The main objective is to demonstrate how knowledge in rhetoric can help designers in their choices and defenses during the design process, defining the audience to be reached, the conclusions and the impositions of experience that the appropriate strategies can create.

Keywords: Architectural language, Duck, decorated shed, rhetoric, mimeses.