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Still Learning from Denise Scott Brown

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45 Years of learning from Las Vegas

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Learning from Las Vegas—the book that taught architects, urban planners, and generations of students to look at the everyday landscape, “the ugly and the ordinary” as a springboard for authentic building in contemporary times—recently passed 40 years since its first appearance. Written by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown (the team that would introduce what would come to be known as Postmodernism to American architecture) along with Steven Izenour, the book was published by The MIT Press, first in 1972 (designed by Muriel Cooper); then in a revised, less expensive edition in 1977 (designed by Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi) with the subtitle “The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form.” It has gone through 25 printings and appeared in 12 different languages, including Polish and Chinese, and its influence has been explored by historians and critics in several books.

The book was the outcome of a studio Venturi and Scott Brown taught at the Yale School of Architecture in 1968 called “Learning from Las Vegas, or Form Analysis as Design Research,” which took a group of students to Las Vegas to investigate and analyze the city’s structure. The studio left an indelible mark on participating students. Designers & Books spoke with several of them. Among their comments: “That studio was fundamental in the formation/justification of my architecture” (Daniel V. Scully); “Denise Scott Brown in particular really drove us to have the highest standards in our research and documentation” (Peter Hoyt); “My connection with Bob and Denise was easily the most significant teacher/student relationship that I ever had in the architectural realm” (Douglas Southworth).

Designers and Books spent an afternoon with Denise Scott Brown at the suburban Philadelphia home she shares with her husband, Robert Venturi, talking with her about what went into making Learning from Las Vegas, her thoughts about the book’s significance today, new writing, and what she’s working on next.

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Urban Concepts

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Denise Scott Brown

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Denise Scott Brown, Architect, Urban Planner, Educator: Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates (Philadelphia)

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