If it quacks like a duck...
- Waadl Cartoonist
- Jun 5
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 21
Drawn on June 3, 2025 | Published from Miami
There once was a duck farmer, Maurer,
Who built a shop shaped like a mallard.
Though said to be Pekin,
The white duck stood beacon
On the New York Route-25 shoulder.
The point of this attraction? To sell duck-related products, naturally. For 1931 Long Island, it was certainly eye-catching — but the logic was simple, if not elegant: make the building look like the thing being sold. Crafted from ferrocement over a wood frame and complete with Model T tail lights for eyes, the structure was about as literal as architecture gets. It quickly became a roadside curiosity and, eventually, a regional landmark.
The concept didn’t immediately catch on in academic circles, but decades later, architectural theorists Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown decided on giving this kind of building a name: the duck. In their 1968 publication Learning from Las Vegas [1], they coined the term to describe buildings whose form is inseparable from their function — structures that visually declare what they are. In sharp contrast to the more conventional “decorated shed,” a system of architectural communication which broadcasts identity through signs pinned to the wall similar to the colorful banners in today’s cartoon, the “duck” fuses message to form, changing its very meaning into the message itself.
Although this wasn't exactly a new idea — what with ancient Greek temples often embodying a similar literalism — this specific ornithological gesture gave rise to a broader metaphor in architectural nomenclature that just stuck. Today, “duck” refers not only to buildings shaped like their contents, but to any object, image, or concept where form overtakes function — where ornament becomes so overt, it verges on parody.
Funnier still is the question of whether Maurer’s “masterpiece” was a deliberate riff on the old adage: “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.” The phrase, like the building, invites us to honor the obvious with skepticism. Yet in today's landscape of media spectacle, political theater, and egotistical aggrandizement, this logic can be tragically reversed. Saturated by figures and appearances, we stop recognizing the duck — not because it is hidden, but because it may in fact be absolutely everywhere you look.
This irony really hits home in U.S. politics, where exaggerated posturing — so draped in gravitas and so self-consciously representational that not even Mussolini could raise his chin high enough to meet the moment — obscures substance. Really, the louder it quacks, the more we second-guess what we hear.
Without quite violating Disney copyright, it is in the paradox of not seeing the duck in a person literally named Donald that modern politicians thrive. Indeed, they become ducks in the architectural sense: highly stylized performances of leadership, where grandiose showmanship substitutes for policy, principle, or — worse yet — Truth. The duck is quacking. Telling us exactly what it is. So how is it that we hear nothing?
Could being called Daffy raise the awareness we so desperately need?
When will the entertainment value wear off — and reveal the proudly ridiculous ducktatorship parading as populism, bearing the fascism it pretends to mock, encourages us to ignore, and so brazenly implements? Ultimately, the duck symbolizes more than a simple building or a harmless joke; it stands instead as a warning — one ubiquitously announced, yet one we seem collectively incapable of perceiving or unwilling to acknowledge.
"If you should rear a duck in the heart of the Sahara, no doubt it would swim if you brought it to the Nile." [2]
— Mark Twain (1835-1910), The Gilded Age, 1873.
So would our surprise be excused when the duck inevitably turns out to be... a duck? Truly, what happens when the absurd becomes obvious, and the obvious is ignored? If we remain unconscious to the need to resist it, do we still laugh at the quack — or do we follow it, waddling toward disaster like ducklings in a row?
[1] Venturi, R. and Scott Brown, D. (1968) A Significance for A&P Parking Lots, or Learning from Las Vegas. Available at: https://smg.media.mit.edu/classes/DesignSocMedia07/venturi.pdf (Accessed: 3 June 2025).
Reprint: Venturi, R., Scott Brown, D. and Izenour, S. (1972) Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form, p. 88. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Available at: https://architecture-history.org/books/Learning%20from%20Las%20Vegas.pdf (Accessed: 3 June 2025).
[2] Twain, M. (2001) The Gilded Age. Originally published 1873. New York, NY: Penguin. Chapter 21, ‘Mistakes of Novelists’.