(Our) Vegas Vacation

My wife said it was time for vacation, so we went on vacation. We determined our vacation spot based on the following rules:

1. No work.  She claims I have been working too hard for some time now, and it is time for a break.
2. Anywhere in the United States is fair game (but beyond a 200 mile radius from our home and office).
3. The hotel must have a swimming pool.

Well, she didn’t really list the rules explicitly, but I pieced them together from ever increasing vacation conversations in the few weeks preceding our departure.  With a kid on the way and neither of us having been to Las Vegas, we decided that we should at least experience this place that all visit but few tell about. So we went, we experienced, we watched, we laughed, we gambled ($11 dollars worth on slot machines) and we actually had a great time. We chose to stay at Caesar’s Palace, which I had read was archetypal Vegas at its best (and it had five huge pools satisfying rule #3 quite handily!).  As I reflect on our trip, three ideas seem worth sharing.

Vegas is Ridiculousness

In front of the Bellagio, Caesar's Palace in background.

Hotels in Vegas are designed with the sole purpose of outdoing one another. The unwritten motive seemed to be that the person with the most ridiculous, outlandish idea would attract the most visitors, and therefore money, and should be built no matter the upfront cost. Forget simplicity, and ideas about making sure that everything in a design performs a useful function.  The function of most elements in Vegas design is to be ridiculous–to exist merely to draw attention (and paying customers through the front doors!). The funny thing is that in most cases it seems to work.  We were constantly being asked whether we had visited the volcano in front of the Mirage, Treasure Island’s pirate ship battle, the Venetian canals, Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace, the Wynn, Mandalay Bay, and the “dancing water fountains” as my wife called them in front of the Bellagio.

So for much of our time in Vegas I was left questioning my basic design principles.  I was taught, and still mostly believe, that every piece of every design must serve a purpose. But when is it ok to add decoration or eye candy for the sole purpose of pleasing the viewer/user? People like things that look pretty or intriguing or outlandish–surely there are times that it is appropriate to add extraneous elements to dress up a design, even if they aren’t totally necessary.

Hoover Dam

Looking out over the hoover dam from the Nevada side.

The Hoover Dam was an amazing example of good design followed by lots of hard work (and great project management skills–the dam was built on time and under budget!).  The scale of the project was obviously impressive:

• An entire city (Boulder City) was built nearby to house all of the workers
• The project was such an undertaking that six construction companies had to band together to build it (they cleverly renamed the conglomerate group “Six Companies, Inc.”)
• “When completed in 1936, it was both the world’s largest electric-power generating station and the world’s largest concrete structure” (Wikipedia).

But even more impressive to me were the innovations created to facilitate the process of building such a massive hunk of concrete–the canyon-spanning crane system used to deliver fresh concrete to the 5′ x 5′ forms; diverting a river as big as the Colorado from its natural course; and especially the refrigeration system used to cool the concrete in a reasonable amount of time (it was calculated that the concrete would take over 125 years to cool/harden because of the amount of heat generated by the curing process so they built a massive refrigeration unit and used it to circulate cold water through pipes embedded in the concrete to speed up the curing process).  The entire visit left my work feeling tiny and insignificant when compared to these history changing projects, but perhaps there will be time for those later in life!

The Lion King

While in Vegas, we decided to go see The Lion King at Mandalay Bay.  The show was fun and the actors were decent, but some of the costumes were examples of design at its best.  The cheetah and giraffe costumes were ingenious–I was amazed at how they could mimic the movements of these animals despite being so different from the human form.  Photographs don’t do the costumes or acting justice, and I didn’t take any video in the theater, so I guess I’ll just have to recommend that you go see the show!

All in all, we had a great time in Las Vegas. We were able to relax and enjoy ourselves away from our work and I was inspired to think about old design problems and principles in new ways.  It’s always good to experience other places!