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Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming-025 College of
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Casino Lost; Casino Regained©
David Kranes*
"How many daydreams we have....of Doors! The door is an entire cosmos of the Half-open. It is one of the primal images; [a door] accumulates desires and temptations: the temptation to open up. At times it is closed, bolted, padlocked. At others, it is open, that is to say, wide open."Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space Let's start with stories. "Stories transport," I've read. And in the casino game--transportation--drawing all those people from 'there' to 'here', their spaces to ours, is critical. And "stories transport," to finish the quote, "..to worlds beyond troubledones." So: when we cross from everyday lives into casino-space, we cross fromthe sometimes 'troubled' real into the imagined. Work to Play. Practical into Possible. Mundane into Extraordinary. Conditional into Unconditional. In short, we cross: from the daily reminders and realities of "loss" in our lives into the fantasies of "gain." "The imagination gives rise to the idea of possibility and the what-might-be beyond." (Herbert Kohl, Should We Burn Babar?, p. 62). Create a casino; make people imagine! The space of any thriving casino needs to be extraordinary; it must feel unconditional; it feels to be a place in which what one's life has lost might--even temporarily--be regained. A casino space has much more to do with how-we-dream-ourselves than with how-we-live-ourselves. Story time! Once upon a time, long-ago, far away in America....only a single state--imagine that!--had casinos. I've heard Ne-vada wrongly translated as: Don't go there--"Ne-vada." But everyone did. And does--still. But if you wanted to play--long ago, faraway--Nevada was the lone place to transport yourself. Male. Wild. A bit forbidden. And if you were a palace-maker for this only-game-in-town, it was arithmetic. Pure; simple. Buy land. Put up walls--at the edges--leaving what you could spare for parking. Compute: how many tables, machines, how many basic-accommodation rooms the cubic footage would bear. And--gaming license in hand:contract...subcontract: do it. Simple arithmetic. "Once upon a Time." It was a seller's market. And players strode through the door, scanned for Action, didn't look left, right, headed for the tables, took their money out and played. Men--players my architectfriend calls "the Johnny Lunchpail crowd." And, when they were tapped out, they left. So that's Story #1: "How it Was." Long ago. Faraway. Remember: stories transport. They take us to worlds that are not our own.
Story #2--my own: "The First Time I Gambled." I was--but am no longer--an Eastern Boy. I grew up in the möbius strip that includes Harvard University and MIT--a world in which brilliant people defeated major diseases between breakfast and lunch. Nobel Prize winners sipped sherry in my living room. What was Gaming? Gambling? My closest touchstones were chess...math puzzlers. I knew Nevada was a state--but of what? So I was an "innocent;" a "virgin"--ready to be "transported" and teaching at the University of Utah, when a law professor friend said, "Hey: We're going over to Elko; come along?" And I said sure. I thought: Fine; we'll go there; see a new part of the West, be with friends. ButI won't play; I won't gamble. Clearly I was not what a casino executive would deem a "target group." Then, on a given night--before the trip--our friends visited. With cards. Chips. A craps layout. John Scarne's book on casino gambling. "Just in case," they said; "just in case you do play--some things to think about. So we spent an hour. And following the Don't Pass strategy laying full odds--I turned $40 into over a hundred. I won't play, I thought. Butit's good to know--if--what works. Unbeknownst, you see, I was moving into the "target group" category: "virgin," yes, but with a slightly whetted appetite. But the truth is: it wasn't dipping my toes on my own living room carpet that most primed me. It was the journey. To Nevada. Stories transport. Images transport. So it was transport into an imagined Nevada that hooked me: crossing over--one state to another. State-of-mind gliding to state-of-mind. You see: the more a casino recalls details of our daily lives, the less we want to go there, let alone stay. So it can't bear down. Like Every Day. It can't regulate. It can't put us under the clock. It can't bore. It can't feel unspontaneous. Unstimulating. Did you know--fact--that if no stimuli impinge from the immediate environment, an animal will seek stimuli (why not in a casino) or invent them? An animal will always leave the dull everyday and--scent of fantasy in the wind--stalk the imaginable. Teased by suggestion--I was more the "target audience" casino builders eye now. I was the Unlikely Gambler. And what happened in The Crossing--from state to state was: The rising of Expectation, increase of Appetite. It started in dusk. Leaving Salt Lake, after work: ...four-thirty. And by the time we'd reached the Salt Flats, it was dark. Amazing! I was going to Nevada! To maybe gamble! And I had already crossed from everyday street and office lights into the mysterious desert, into uninhabited space. Itwas a ride! it was a trip! a journey! And then!...ohmyGod, then!...it began to snow. I mean: could this be more exciting?! To leave work? leave obligation? pierce the dark? cross an Ancient Sea? battle snow?! I mean, I know my Homer; I know my Odyssey--and I was there; I was it, Baby. It doesn't--as they say--get any better than that. It was thrilling! We stopped first in Wendover; fueled; got new wiper blades; went for a look-see--into the old State Line Casino: Johnny Lunchpail from top to bottom, what seemed an airplane hanger totally congested using all the square footage it could use tables, machines. So I wandered around. And I can't tell you anything -- today -- about the casino; it didn't register. But I stood behind a winning blackjack player who thought I brought him luck and kept handing silver dollars over his shoulder to keep me in my place, from not walking away with whatever luck I embodied. I mean: I was hooked now, and I'd never played.
Story #3: again personal. The title of this story is: "The Magic Casino." Or it could be titled: "The casino I Went Back to Again and Again." It goes like this: Back in the early days -- when I drove to play, "transported" myself via roads -- the place I always chose was Cactus Pete's in Jackpot, Nevada. It was a bit farther than Elko -- and a good two hours past Wendover. But it became a "magic" casino, and it was the first casino I ever wrote a story about. What had caught my eye was a standard promotion: second night free, Fun Book, $2.00 in nickles -- that stuff. And like Wendover, it required a crossing over -- state to state -- Idaho to Nevada. If you can "crossover," you can change. If you can assume another "state," you can assume another life: reimagine yourself. And why I went back and back was: clearly, the crossing gave me something; didn't disappoint me. Again -- brought to feel more than myself -- I drove through volcanic lava, crested a final hill, and arrived into the music of my childhood: The Sons of The Pioneers (I'd seen every Roy Rogers movie at the University theatre) were playing for the weekend at Cactus Pete's. So: here was a casino that was at-the-same-time myth, dream, fantasy, memory. I was hooked. Swayed. "Transported." And my crossing had involved enough time to let it enter -- enter me: it wasn't just hokey sidewalk-to-lights-and-slot-bells.There was passage. Transition time and space which let excitement stir, the "new world" to take hold. At Cactus Pete's I felt "released" and "secured" -- both at once. "Released" in that I was bound by no previous structures of my life. I was in "Wild West" space. I was in "casino" space. "Secured" because Cactus Pete's wrapped itself around me like a friend. It anchored me in the music of my childhood. The empressario of Jackpot, a man by the name of Al Huber, always extended himself. I'd get wrangled onto his jeep and up into the hills, where he'd show me the wild horses, disclose the trout streams, point out where the thermal springs bubbled into the Wheeler Ranch. And there were dealers who'd heard I was "a writer" and who offered me stories on their breaks -- across the street at The Horshu -- for a drink. And there was "Hayden" -- Carl Hayden -- Pete's and Jackpot's chief publicist -- who'd once been Hemingway's friend, and he'd slide himself into my booth at breakfast and pick up the bill -- all, probably six dollars of it. What I'm saying is: I went back and back, played almost only at Cactus Pete's, because it was Wonderland and Home at the same time. I had all the comforts of Kansas, all the adventures of The Emerald City--in the same place. Why go anywhere else? Gambling is a curious activity. We want to relax -- and we want our blood to boil....all at once. Want to be both fully in and out of control -- without contradiction. "Managed Wildness." And here's a notion to think about. Gamblers gamble, players play:so that they might recover their losses. Obviously, you say; but I say, wait a minute: I'm not talking about people lined up at the ATMs because they've gone through their initial stake. I'll say it again: Gamblers gamble so that they might recover their losses. The more, then, a casino can create the sense-through-space of a World Passed, a World Lost, the more it seems to "redeem" those losses to the gambler. Last story! one told me by a former compulsive (a man of considerable power) as to why he started and, for years, couldn't stop. The World Lost here, you'll see, is Camelot. Our man--back in November of 1963--was a police detective in NYC. When the news broke that President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, all New York police were required to report to their precincts. Who knew what foreign invasion the assassination foretold? Who knew in what ways every trained police officer might be needed? The back rooms of precincts, then, were full. Of idle and waiting officers, detectives. And in that "waiting time," "Games" grew up. And though he'd never played, Our Man, joined into a dice game."I'd lost my President," he said; "I'd lost his Dream of Camelot. And I wanted to Win him back. I wanted to bring John Kennedy back to life." He didn't. He lost $165. And then he tried -- for years -- to win that loss back. Nearly $200,000 later, he stopped trying to recover what had been lost. What have we Lost in our World? Sunlight. Water. Green space and flowers. The Past -- especially certain nostalgized and charming eras. Childhood. ForAmericans: The Old World, Europe. The railroads were almost lost. The Frontier is vanishing. As much, then, as those shaping the spaces and image of a casino can appear tobe giving us back our Lost Worlds -- returning us to them and them to us -- they will, at the same time, be all-the-more freeing us to "play." Look at what Steve Wynn has done: he has given us back the animal kingdom, water, green space, the power of fire. Sure: it's all a Mirage. But...we get transported. We "enter" the Mirage hopeful, expectant, willing to"play" -- in water, among flowers, at the tables. So-- story time over-- keep in mind the two lessons presumed: First, that players want to be "transported" to their play; they seek destination to enter fantasy (and this may be why New Orleans is a precarious gaming destination: namely "travelers" travel to New Orleans, first, for another fantasy than gambling; they gamble after). And second, we want what feels "lost." Give players a Lost World and they will be playing in a space which seems, in part, immune to loss. How does one create and what are the most essential elements in such a space?
The Argument "...by changing space, by leaving the space of one's usual sensibilities, one enters into communication with a space that is psychically innovating." Gaston Bachelard, Intimate Immensity" Casino expansion is everywhere. Still, there are "Lost Worlds" with locked doors. Or which have declared bankruptcy or are on the verge of doing so. How to survive? Who will grow? Who will fold? Today's Lost Worlds offer white tigers! Moving ancient statues in a fountain. They attempt (badly) to recreate Oz! Or Treasure Island. Places of story! They build a pyramid, rebuild Paris, rebuild New York, New York! But we have Paris: we have the original! And we have New York New York....such as it is! Should the planners stop? reimagine? If it's not Lost -- don't Find it! The point is: what are the best ways to "construct" a "place" when the activity central to that place is play? How does one best design a space -- its "stuff," its "skin" such that the wandering pilgrim, entering, feels a rush, feels at once empowered by adventure -- yetfeels: "I'm home!"?
Going Home: Approach and Anticipation One sets out toward a lover, for the mountains to ski, toward the Mall of America to shop, or across the desert to Elko: and a stirring occurs; an internal drama of what's-to-come; an anticipation. Because the closing of distance, the becoming proximate-- "Nearer to Thee"-- has force, near can be emotionally powerful. The senses grow more keen, more acute. The promise of the "arrival" moment surges....it recedes. In that sense, the approach is very tidal, very rhythmic. It's dramatic. It's a strip-tease. It's foreplay. Approach is critical. If one wants the "pilgrim," the "entrant," to feel a sense of "flow," a good deal of that can be designed and engineered. A badly paved, a bumpy or unposted approach can create disappointment. Over-anticipation can lead to a loss of spirit and exhaustion. Players won't play if they are dispirited or lost. Space's relationship to spirit and vitality is no new notion. It has been central to city planners and theologians, playwrights and psychologists, architects and biologists. A biologist describing the viability of a cell may use language not unlike that used to describe the power of a gothic cathedral. (Or the drawing power of a casino) All might speak about centers and thresholds, about exchange between the inside and the outside. And it wouldn't be outrageous to hear the designer of a new hotel casino use the neurologist's term, receptor sites. One reads discussions of amiable places, of enriched and impoverished environments. Susan Toch, an environmental planner has studied and described what she terms "enabling environments." There are spaces which, upon our entry, make us feel empowered and emotionally expansive. There are other spaces which can make us feel disempowered and contracted. In other words: certain spaces flood us with energy and make us feel we are winners; other spaces bleed energy and make us feel that we are losers. Some spaces, when we enter them, feel to be play grounds literally -- where the urge to play feels spontaneous. There are spaces which, when we enter them, discourage play -- where the elements deaden play impulses in the human emotions. People "read" place on an unconscious level. Any place we enter has its "legibility." Surviving casino hotels will be those which are pleasurably legible. For those casinos that perish, the writing has for years been writ large, and there is little a new owner or a new management team can do. Such operations have been "legible" as tombs -- in the way their patrons have "read" them -- for some time now. Many casino spaces have been shaped and arranged to optimize profits.And that is fine -- if it doesn't discourage the spirit of play, the urge to play. Many casino spaces have been shaped and arranged on the basis of imitation: this is what a casino looks like. And that is fine as well -- as long as these don't discourage the player. Many casinos seem to have arranged their spaces on the basis of some jaded assumption: "players will play; give 'em a little fake opulence and opportunities for action, and they'll spend their money." As along-term survival tactic -- grounded as it is in the compulsive player only -- such an assumption begs disaster. I can walk into any hotel-casino and almost immediately know its survival potential. I have done it repeatedly: turned to a friend and said: "This place draws people," or "the life of this place is limited." When Atlantic City was first announced as a destination gaming site, I felt the notion--on the basis of all I know about place and space -- to be novel but as inherently doomed as Las Vegasis inherently inspired. In his landmark book, Homo Ludens (Man, The Player), Johan Huizinga notes that play is not ordinary or real life. It is a stepping out of "real" life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all its own. However ingeniously smoked and mirrored, Atlantic City can never feel to be such a "step" into unreality. It can never be a true Oasis, a true Mirage. The lie is too patent, the illusion too clear. The "problem," in most cases, is that a casino management's need for space utilization conflicts with the casino patron's need to experience space. Builders tend to measure space, to think quantitatively, in Euclidean terms: "How many slots can I fit into x square feet?" Players tend to think of space in qualitative, topological terms: "How does this space make me feel when I cross the threshold from real life into it?" These conflicting needs come head to head with the casino the loser. A casino may have managed to get ten more slot machines, eight more tables into a given area than seemed mathematically possible. A patron approaches and emotionally "reads" the chaos of the space and walks away. What are some of the elements necessary to a casino-hotel's ongoing vitality? What is it that the human organism seeks out in any space? What are the elements that make a given space "legible" in the most inviting and energizing of ways?
The Vocabulary of The Eye: Rediscovering "Home" "...People have within them various brain-body mechanisms that react to different aspects of their surroundings." Tony Hiss, A Sense of Place Despite all the selling of "getaway" packages, Home is what, at heart, we always hope, ironically, to get away to. We are all seeking to inhabit that space which most empowers us, which feels most rewarding, most secure, most natural, most intimate. How, then, does Home feel? It feels centered certainly -- as though there were a strong and clear vertical axis ascending its core and around which all "home life" revolves. Mary Richards says, in her book, Centering: "When on center, the self feels different: one feels warm, in touch, the power of life a substance....drinking it in and giving it off at the same time quiet and at rest within." Again: "The world is always bigger than one's own focus. And as we bring ourselves into center wherever we are, the more of that world we can bring into service, the larger will be the capacity of our action and our understanding." Of particular interest to the world of casino space, is Richards' notion that, "the way to center is by abandonment." Among Richards' other gifts, she's a potter. She speaks about the relationship between center and abandonment in another way: "...What is freedom? First of all, freedom seems to mean the absence of external restraint." One can let go of outside restraint -- one can abandon one's own restraints, enter the flow of a place -- if there is a felt or perceived center.
Home's Front Door: "Thresholds" "The door is an entire cosmos of the Half-open. In fact it is one of its primal images, the very origin of a daydream that accumulates desires and temptations: the temptation to open up the ultimate depths of being." --Gaston Bachelard, Poetics Of Space The thresholds of the space are of enormous importance. The entries. Crossing into any power-filled space will feel magical, vital, mysterious. The pulse quickens. The lungs fill. One feels a particular charge in the "crossing over." "We are priests--always knocking on the door of mystery," Johann Huizinga says. The adrenalin surges; yet it is a focused surge, not the surge of fear or anxiety. It is the lift one feels upon returning home, to a charged and familiar space. Also: once in the space, one wants a clear knowledge of the threshold out. We want to feel the choice and freedom of passage. We want to feel we can take the empowerment of any "special" place with us, at any time, back out and into the world. We cross in as pilgrims; we cross out as priests.
Feeling at Home: "Flow" "Go with the flow," we are told. And -- yes; right -- it's a buzzword. Still, the buzzword has received some instructive comment. People "in the flow" are happy; they're connected. They're energized, naturally "high," feeling vital. They're players. A critical objective of an architectural space is that those people who hoped to be active in it feel its "flow." Those examining spaces address flow. One psychologist, Mihaly Caikszentmihalyi. "Mr. C." (as a chummy pit boss might call him) has monitored flow and its absence with some 25,000 subjects, beeping them eight times a day for an "experience sampling." Writer Winifred Gallagher, in her The Power Of Place, takes up "Mr. C" and his findings. Ms. Gallagher addresses flow by first noting places without "flow." She finds them "inhospitable" -- unlike "home." They are places which configure to make people feel outside the pleasures of optimum experience. "Access to the right settings," she says, "is so important to attaining our peak experiences." What, then, characterizes such experiences? "When we're in flow," Ms. Gallagher says, "whether while playing the violin or climbing a mountain, our actions merge with our awareness. We stop being spectators of our own experience." Addressing this dissolution of self-consciousness another way, she says: "...our activity dictates our experience of time rather than the clock. This intense focus also means we forget our daily problems." What characterizes the places? Ms. Gallagher gives us Mr. C's conclusion: "People are usually happiest in settings in which they're relieved of others' demands and in control of their own actions." He has found a decided preference for wide-open spaces and that, "...we're generally happiest in public settings with other people around." Could be the right casino! To optimize "flow," then, is a major objective in the creation of a casino space. And if a player feels "in the flow," what are some of flow's elements?
What's the Best Place for the Sofa?: "Order" "Play creates order, is order." --Johan Huizinga, Man The Player Home's center provides a second necessity: that home feel ordered. Studies of sacred spaces show that such "shrines" create space which feels particularly ordered and secured from the chaos of the outside world. Thus, whatever might feel like chaos or disorientation within a casino will only serve to drive players away. My wife and I once looked at a house in Salt Lake which I spontaneously fell in love with. Why? Though I could list qualities, they didn't equal my response. And then I realized: the "order" -- the "shape" or configuration of the house -- felt very much like the house I had grown up in. We didn't buy the house. I think I wasn't ready to settle, and I knew: if we bought that house....I would never leave it. Order though -- as any biologist and dreamer-of-houses knows -- isn't simple geometry or symmetry. In fact, sheer geometry and symmetry feel cold and dehumanizing. Systems order themselves in richly various ways. As long as a given system doesn't contradict itself, it can seem ordered. Someone entering a space need only pick up initial clues which allow him to trust that there are "rules" of design in operation. It would seem, in fact, that the ideal experience of order is two-fold: First, one senses that the space has inherent design;and second, one "reads" that the space contains the unseen, is explorable, has mystery. "Mystery," Mary Richards says, "sucks at our breath like a wind tunnel. Invites us into it." In his book, A Sense Of Place, author Tony Hiss calls this double-edged sense of order, "simultaneous perception." Of it, he says, "I feel relaxed and alert at the same time." Of a favorite park, Prospect Park ("...a place that seems to welcome experiencing"), he captures order's double edge this way: "welcome [and] safety, wonder [and] exhilaration." Hiss then tells an instructive anecdote about being in Grand Central Station, a space which he'd known well but one which had undergone some spatial reconfiguring. With the addition of arcade shops and food counters, its familiar spatial envelope had shrunk. "I felt hurried along," he says; "my breathing was shallow and constricted. He says he felt brushed and touched by others, even though he wasn't. "...nearby foot falls and normal tones of voice registered as loud but blurred." Thus he describes a kind of spatial chaos, of panic. What to do? His response would seem to underscore the necessity of "escape alcoves," doorway "grottos" or "islands" (what, in Gothic cathedrals, might be "chapels") in large and busy spaces of hubbub. "The only alternative to hurrying forward seemed to be to swerve right at random and come to rest in front of a shop." Hiss's stepping out of tumult, the rushing water, calms him. It gives him a moment to "re-fit" himself to the space, to reread it and find its rhythm, to turn its "noise" into a kind of music. With this, he feels,"...a slight lightening in my shoulders," and "...saw in front of me a different light: grayer, clearer, brighter, less intense." When he reenters the terminal and its human traffic, he speaks of there being only a single sound: "Vast and quiet, it seemed evenly distributed throughout the great room. This sound, pleasant in all its parts, regular in all its rhythms, and humorous and good-natured, seemed also to have buttoned me into some small, silent bubble of space."
Home-Lines: "The Straight and the Not-So-Straight" "...The curve welcomes us and the oversharp angle rejects us...the angle is masculine and the curve feminine....the beloved curve has nest-like powers; it incites us to possession, it is a curved 'corner,' inhabited geometry." --Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics Of Space Sheer geometry is often the most expedient and economic way to solve a given problem of space -- the definition of space, the partition of space. A straight line, after all, is the shortest distance....etc. But casinos aren't office buildings; they aren't warehouses. Expedience destroys experience. Casino space and the grid design are enemies. Most often, casinos are spaces in which players are trying to escape expediency and practical economics. As such, casinos might best employ the more organic, feminine, natural and sexual use of the curve. Bachelard also speaks of "…[seeking] warmth and quiet life in the arms of a curve." The most enticing and alluring and stimulating casino spaces are those which make principal use of the curvilinear rather than the straight. In brief evidence, a Michigan husband-and-wife research team, Stephen and Rachel Kaplan, believe that we have a hard wired and innate preference for winding paths. Such paths, they feel, provide "mystery" for the wanderer. In their thinking: landscapes provide 'mystery' when they "…give the impression that one could acquire new information if one were to travel deeper into the scene." Such a truth is demonstrated elegantly by all the winding paths at The Mirage. So many people, without realizing it, look up consciously for the first time to find themselves dead center in the casino. Architect Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language articulates the results of an eight-year study examining why certain places "make people feel alive and human." Alexander ranks certain of the 253 aspects orpatterns with special priority. For example: we humans, it seems, are made to feel particularly vital in an identifiable environment. Like much of the organic world, we thrive on sunlight and shrink from darkness. In a similar "light," we respond positively to warm colors. We like the shoulder-to-shoulder people-energy of pedestrian traffic but shun, wherever possible, motorized traffic. The pervasive presence of the elderly, interestingly, gives us comfort and joy. And we take energy out of the presence of an accessible green space. Less primary in Alexander's study but central in the studies of other is the presence and sound of moving water.
Home's Garden: "Greenspace" "Tranquil foliage that really is lived in, a tranquil gaze discovered in the humblest of eyes, are the artisans of immensity. These images make the world grow." --Gaston Bachelard, Intimate Immensity Human connection to green space, evidence reveals, is crucial. It's an almost-Lost World. We evolve from "savannahs," and research shows that memory of and nostalgia for the natural may be hardwired in us. Recovering patients in hospitals recover faster where windows look out on a natural setting. Students in schools learn more directly if their school interfaces with green landscape and trees. Accessible green. Its real presence -- not its silk or plastic presence -- appears to trigger those senses of "center" and "order" which orient us pleasurably within a space, which make us feel "at home." A related issue is sunlight. Sunlight suppresses the production of melatonin in the pineal gland. Melatonin production enhances sleep. In overabundance, melatonin enhances depression. The use of lamps which simulate first sunlight in the workplaces of geographic locales seasonally scant of sun, have helped shape a more energized workforce. There are phototherapists working in similar ways who are discovering that chronic depression in patients dissolves for weeks at a time after infusions of sunlight. One such researcher, Michael Terman, uses what he calls a "tropical dawn machine." Is it outrageous to suggest that casinos, in sunlight-deprived places, equip themselves with "tropical dawn machines?" Especially in locales and climates which otherwise deny green space and natural sun, interiors which can offer these, as mood "supplements," act toward optimizing a "vital" space. Las Vegas is naturally abundant with palm trees, sun; Atlantic City isn't. To offer opulent glass and steel, chandeliers and carpet merely repeats the better office-space gestures of Manhattan or Philadelphia.
"Planting" Home's Garden: What does one do with an empty, bleak, sere and rectangular ten-acre piece of land? Plant it! Filled with contours and colors and shapes and textures, a dismal space becomes inviting; it takes on a life. One goes to Monet's Giverny in Normandy or to Villa Lante in Viterbo, Italy, to experience just how excitingly a lifeless plot of land might be planted. Villa Lante and Giverny represent two classic ways of planting. Villa Lante presents the formal Italian garden. Giverny offers the natural or English garden. Both are highly calculated. The Italian garden flaunts its calculation in impressive manicured shapes and geometry. The English garden hides its calculation by creating the illusion that all has been spontaneous; everything flows into everything else. The Italian garden's dramatic presence is style, wit, elegance; it's superior and intellectual. The English garden's dramatic presence is more emotional and earthy. Someone within an English garden feels a part of the landscape. Someone in an Italian garden feels a spectator. Needless to say, architectural interiors are similarly planted. And it's important that players moving through, experiencing such spaces, not feel themselves in scapes untended or overgrown, spaces being used for a landfill. My comments will draw, often, upon this notion of planting the space.
The Music of Home: "Acoustical Space." "Music creates order out of chaos." --Anthony Storr, Music and the Mind The above is a given. Musicologists rephrase Storr's line variously. "Music structures time," they say. And: "...music has a power akin to that of the orator." And: "…there is a closer relation between hearing and emotional arousal than between seeing and emotional arousal." And "...music connects the otherwise unconnected and random." The corollary of this is, of course: noise creates chaos out of order. Any given space takes a shape from its sounds. Are those sounds "music" or "noise?" If a prime spatial objective of a casino is to make a play feel "flow" and "at home:" how is the sound contributing. A given play-space might visually arrange itself in the most comforting and liberating ways. If that same space, at the same time, allows sound to be a din, to be cacophonous, it might undo most of what it has -- through architecture and design -- created. A final quote: "Rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent; melody imposes continuity [flow] upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous." (Yehudi Menuhin, Theme & Variations). One recall's Tony Hiss's disorienting experience in Grand Central Station, mentioned in the section on Order. Builders and shapers of casinos have a powerful tool -- would they use it: the shaping of sounds within -- the optimizing of music rather than noise. It is crucial that a "place of play" be (in its sounds) beautifully legible and not a scribble.
Reading Home: "Legibility" What is the heart of any place's "legibility" (a term coined by Drs. Stephen and Rachael Kaplan, Michigan psychologists)? Architect and writer, William Lam, argues that people are constantly vigilant for information relating to five crucial elements in their livelihood: orientation, defense, sustenance, stimulation and survival. First: it is vitally important that a place give us a legible "read"on these points of information. Second: it is important that the "read" we get be positive. If we feel oriented, if we feel safe, if we find sustenance and stimulation, then a joyous and liberated survival will appear guaranteed. The delicate balance of place-legibility, in the terms of the Michigan psychologist team who coined it, is: "...an environment that looks as if one could explore it extensively without getting lost." It would seem, then, that we like mystery. We like surprise. But we need assurance that -- though a given place has hidden nooks and crannies -- we will not get lost. Above all, we need orientation: vantage, prospect, centeredness. The trick, then, of any large casino, is to provide "explorable space" which never makes the customer feel disoriented. A final story. When my children were children, our family took a trip to Washington State's Olympic Peninsula. A lodge we stayed at had two adjacent playgrounds, equidistant from the lodge. One had been assembled by the Park Services; the other, created by the Quinault Tribe. Equidistant as they were, one was always full and active -- the other, empty. Because one was just a space with some play "stuff" in it. The other was a playground. I'll let you guess which was which. Today's casino world is one which hopes to convert the "unlikely" player into a player. In that world, it is not enough, simply, to provide games and play. One has to understand as deeply as possible, what "play"is -- and then build play grounds.
©1999 Eadington, W.R. and J.A. Cornelius (eds.). The Business of Gaming: Economics and Management Issues. Reno: Institute for the Study of Gambling & Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada, Reno. *David Kranes is Professor of English at the University of Utah. He is a consultant to several gaming companies on the issue of casino design. |
