Las Vegas doesn’t run on logic. It runs on neon, grease, and spectacle. Set within a reimagined desert terrain carved into casino floorplans, Heat Maps, Grease Traps proposes a closed-loop agro-diner where food production is
powered by heat, excess, and performance. Neon signage cooks. Slot machines power irrigation.
The landscape feeds itself. The plateaus are lifted
directly from the casino floorplan case studies in
Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas. Each casino plan
becomes a topographic object, a raised surface that absorbs, concentrates, and releases heat. Their forms generate distinct thermal readings: some behave like
radiators, others like slow-cooling griddles. These
differences register as heat maps, revealing the
invisible metabolism of the desert around them.