ruminations about architecture and design

Friday, August 24, 2012

all the world's a game


A rendering of the MGM casino complex proposal for Springfield, MA. Hooray, now we can put our feet up and cheer because this will save the city and everyone will be rich and happy and all puppies and kittens will have a home and nothing will ever go wrong again....

It seems to be a well-thought out proposal. It takes advantage of an existing city that is close to major highways (which means it will poach Conn. gamblers) and it attempts to weave the casino into an urban space. This rendering shows the casino as lifestyle center approach. (For those who don't know, a "lifestyle center" is really just an outdoor mall with slightly better design than a strip mall). It conceals the fact that revenues from casinos depend on adults who sit at one-armed bandits losing money, usually while smoking. They are isolated from the outdoors and from other realities of survival. This rendering tries to conceal that harsh fact by depicting families with children wandering about a cartoon dreamland that has nice-looking streetlamps and what appears to be a huge television screen.

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