Denise Scott Brown
Author of Learning from Las Vegas
About the Author
Works by Denise Scott Brown
Soane Memorial Lecture 2018 1 copy
City Dreamers 1 copy
Architecture as signs and systems : for a mannerist time — Author — 1 copy
Associated Works
The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping / Harvard Design School Project on the City 2 (2001) — Contributor — 162 copies
Harvard Design Magazine: The origins and evolution of "urban design" 1956-2006 — Contributor — 2 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1931-10-03
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- South Africa
- Country (for map)
- USA
- Birthplace
- Nkana, Northern Rhodesia
- Places of residence
- Los Angeles, California, USA
Berkeley, California, USA
Johannesburg, South Africa
Philidelphia, Pennsylvania, USA - Education
- University of the Witwatersrand
Architectural Association School of Architecture (1955)
University of Pennsylvania (M.A.|1960) - Occupations
- architect
professor
urban planner - Relationships
- Venturi, Robert (husband)
- Organizations
- University of Pennsylvania
University of California, Los Angeles
Yale University - Awards and honors
- Vincent Scully Prize (2002)
Design in Mind Award (2007)
AIA Gold Medal (2016)
Jane Drew Prize (2017)
ECC Award (2016)
Edmund N. Bacon Prize (2010) (show all 12)
Athena Award (2007)
Vilcek Prize (2007)
Topaz Medallion (1996)
National Medal of Arts (1992)
Chicago Architecture Award (1987)
Radcliffe Institue Medal (2005)
Members
Reviews
Lists
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 11
- Also by
- 4
- Members
- 787
- Popularity
- #32,341
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 8
- ISBNs
- 25
- Languages
- 7
"Learning from Las Vegas" is one of the five most important books of architecture in the 20th century, up there with Le Corbusier's "Towards a New Architecture," Rem Koolhaas's "Delirious New York," Aldo Rossi's "The Architecture of the City," and Venturi's own "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture." Born from a 1968 Yale architecture studio, the book analyzed the way casinos, hotels and other buildings along the Las Vegas Strip used signage to attract attention and apprise drivers of the contents of the buildings set back behind parking lots. Through this, they argued for the Decorated Shed over the Duck, the former using signage to communicate the contents of a simple building and the latter using form to convey its function. Put simply, the Duck represented Modernism while the Decorated Shed represented something else, what would become Postmodernism in ensuing years. Like Venturi's earlier "Complexity and Contradiction," which argued that "Main Street is almost all right," "Learning from Las Vegas" looked at an extreme example of one (the Strip) rather than at capital-A architecture to determine what architecture should be and what architects should learn from.
Like most architects, I first encountered "Learning from Las Vegas" in architecture school. Given that this was the early 1990s, I read the revised edition from 1977 in a seminar class on architectural theory, not the original 1972 edition. (My copy is from 1993, the book's twelfth printing.) Not many books can boast of such different editions: the first edition is a hardcover book whose size and expense (it was expensive originally, over the years as a hard-to-find artifact, and in MIT Press's facsimile edition) signal something special, while the revised edition is a much smaller paperback designed to be affordable to students like myself. The revised edition cut a third of the original book by eliminating part 3, a presentation of Venturi and Rauch's buildings and projects, and many of the images that would not work on a smaller page size. Regardless of these cuts and a substantially different page design, the arguments of the text have held up, while the lower price has guaranteed a wider circulation and lasting influence.… (more)