Quondam, no unfortunately I only have access to the revised edition. However, although the first edition (of any book of importance) most definitely has its place and value, I would not say that it supersedes forthcoming editions - especially with the involvement of the authors. The fact is that DSB herself claims that the argument was made more clear with the clear(er?) intention to make LLV a treatise on symbolism in architecture. Now although I can't compare first to revised edition, the stated intention and strategies (de-sexing <possibly detracting from what you liked most <was originally and instinctively most paradigmatic for you?> about that book>, formulating clearer arguments) suggests to me that the revised LLV is intended to be more discursively polemical than perhaps visually so. And therefore, it gives us even more liberty to attack it on the basis of its own verbal attack and defence without the need to refer to a former edition. Regardless, for now, I cannot refer to the VSB projects you refer to, unfortunately.

Your second post I think is sympathetic to my concern stated above - and it is a concern because I do feel that the book is an interesting, lively and, as I understand,a seminal book that is at the same time deeply flawed, pompous in its declarations against expressionism and for decoration, pretentious in its posturing as a benign research to preclude ethical adventures and quite extreme or naive in its understanding of symbolism (given the even then enormous literature on semiotics, semiology, and generally signification). There is a complete blindness to the necessity to define the meaning and the necessity  of ornament (and what kind of ornament); it is merely assumed that ornament is good because people red late to it and expression is is bad because people do not.personally,that is paper thin logic to me. Is vanna venturi's house a testimony to ornament or expressionism? The ambiguity and contingency of elements assume a less clear cut distinction between ornament and expressionism/ architectural articulation. In that way,it is a superior essay, albeit architectural, to LLV's positivist ideological anthropology of one form of modernism. In part, the Vanna house is too much,too suggestive of perhas too little, but in part it is what it purports to be, nothing but a house.an essay but not an essay- I don't find irony in the house itself, I find that the house has an irony in its understanding of its own placef as architecture. It is -compared to the seeming mineral eternity of historical architecture trivial-ish, cardboardy even. By comparison, the LLV (revised at least) is pedantically dichotomous and bases itself on beliefs of what is better. Beliefs based on tiredness from other beliefs. So, assuming this is the real core of change in architectural style, are we led to believe that Architecture with a capital A is the art of disdainful elite?

In my quite insignificant opinion, the less seriously one approaches the bases of the rationale of LLV's synthetically gathered arguments, the more one can enjoy its lively and unconventional challenge and the more one approaches these bases analytically, the more the rationale unravels in loose ends. This might come across as an amazing incomplete scatter rather than an orchestration of points...

Preface (revised): "Stripped and newly clothed, the analyses of Part I and the theories of Part II should appear more clearly what we intended them to be: a treatise on symbolism in architecture. Las Vegas is not the subject of our book. The symbolism of architectural form is."

Now having read the book, my personal view is that the analyses of Part 1 are not indeed analyses of the symbolism, or even signification, of architectural form. I would posit that opposite is quite true...Part 1 is a treatise on the FUNCTIONALITY of that particular system of signification and not a treatise on symbolism. Furthermore, I personally do not accept that symbolism has been even alluded to, given that a symbol stands for a system of belief and communication as well as inhabiting particular meanings within this system of belief and communication. Then authors are completely mute on this defining front; beyond the quasi-(functionally)indexical valour of the billboards, lighting and so on, the discussion is bereft of any concern or reference to the symbolic relation between the message, the sign and the 'architecture'. I believe that part of the problem is the very premise that VSBI (I included Izenour,thanks for reminding) made to skirt around passing ethical judgements might have castrated their discussion of the actual symbolism implicit within the Las Vegas signs...that is of a specific form of delirious commercialism. The analyses given after locational, dispositional,  descriptive, mapping- but this is not analyses of symbolism in architecture.  I will attempt to continue furtherbut I don't wantto lose the above because my evilmini tablet  eats my posts

We also ponder, why study Las Vegas? Why equating such a study to studies of Rome and to Athens (as done in preface to first edition). The motivating force for such studies differ greatly. I am not saying that Rome and Athens do not hold within themselves,as historical entities, the ability conjure myths of sustainability and idealism, but these have proved to be immensely important for the dissemination,mixture,migration of complex cultures,of complex systems, architectural and otherwise. By comparison, LLV dooms Las Vegas to pithy spines of reductivist capitalism devoid of self knowledge and hence self criticality( and what is Athens but a historical capital of self knowledge). LLV's Vegas is Fordist line production/line consumption. does it really afford lessons other than within its own simplistic rationale ( quondam, the examples you show are telling. They are simple formuilsd. I do not wish to demean their correctness,but they are correct because they work within a simple system..and hence perhaps the failure to apply this formula elsewhere?).

Now,I have suggested above that the divide made between sign and building is not presented within the dynamics of symbolism. One may argue that the symbolism is to the tropics, to a camp take on Rome, to an oasis...as presented within the book. And this all within the fold of the commonmplace.Again, I disagree that this is of a symbolic value; it is not about symbolism, it is about actual yet fake recreation.  

Now in p.6 there is a admiring reference to pop artists and their disposition towards the commonplace. but pop artists go about with their work not in glorification of the commonplace but in the decontextualization of the commonplace, not to deliver a message so much as to corrupt the message. This is a blind spot of LLV, the authors speak sincerely and respectfully of a commonplace that they wish to learn from uncritically without seeing thst in effect, they have mentally decontextualized it into formula(you called this sort of thing deterretorialization before quondam,I think). This prescriptive self consciousness is antithetical to the unconsciousness of the original object of study. as such, the non delirious urban analysis  part of the book (the Nolli-esque analyses) does not generate actual prescriptive content as there wasn't one to begin with. 

"Italian landscape has always harmonised the vulgar and the Vitruvian" I think the preface again.

That is a crude and simply trivial statement. The commonplace occurs subconsciously, architecture is meant to occur consciously, the landscape/urban environs occur unconsciously unless masteprlanned whichof course is the complete opposite of the subject of the lessons to be learnt.

The attack on modernist architecture is in reality quite thin and based on an equally thin prejudice especially when we can see how also thin this symbolism that VSBI endorse,a culturally questionable and simplistic fetishism of the low brow (excuse me for being a bit prudish here but I am fine with low brow if I can have a share of middle and high brow). Their endorsement of ornament and decoration that they have cleaved off at architectural articulation. Historically, we are presented with fat too much evidence that ornament and architectural articulation go hand in hand. A book im reading and the section on Saint-Sernin ofToulouse :"The builder also employed different types of architectural ornament to mark off divisions both vertically and horizontally within each area"from Mediaeval Architecture,Medieval Learning (p.40) by Charles M.Radding and William W. Clark. There follows sections on organisation of ornaments to accord and enhance with the burgeoning Renaissance spatial and structural organisational principles or modii.

However, the dichotomy VSBI setup between ornament and articulation is not only unjustified but also they do not present us with a defining distinction between one and the other - weareat the level of a clichéof ornament and not ornament itself. 

please excuse the bizarre prosthetic language above, it was all in a bit of a rush and the nexus autocorrected or autoincorrected some words and the screen is too small to fit the text in full. its like trying to pour a river into a small funnel. there is more, i'm sure there is more to say and i hope to. i really think that there is something fundamentally not-quite-right about that book in some of its parts and in the sum of its parts. i think it would be nice to see who is personally responsible for which parts and what sort of language and twist of idea. but, if the revised version has a lot of DSB in it, then I would not be surprised.