- Publisher
- MIT Press
- Published
- 1977
- Shelf
- architecture: Criticism
- ISBN
- 9780262720069
Criticism
Learning from Las Vegas
Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown & Steven Izenour
Three architects take a studio to the Strip and come back arguing that the ugly and ordinary deserves study.
Why read it
The lasting contribution is a method: they surveyed signage, parking and sightlines the way an archaeologist surveys a site, and produced the duck-versus-decorated-shed distinction, still the most useful thing said about when form should follow function and when it should just carry a sign.
Why own it
It is a research document as much as a polemic, and the maps, spreads and photographic surveys need the page size. It is also the best model there is for how to look seriously at something everybody else is dismissing.
Who it is for
Designers of anything that has to communicate at a distance, and every critic of taste.
Reading order
Book 3 of 5 in the architecture reading order. See all 5
Read nextA Pattern LanguageChristopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa & Murray SilversteinAlexander and his co-authors answered with 253 patterns for places people like, each naming a problem and a solution you can build.Read before thisToward an Architecture
Opens a search on AbeBooks, a network of independent and antiquarian sellers, which is where a good part of this shelf has to be found, because it is out of print.
Read next
Chosen because they argue with this one, not because a machine noticed they share a category.
Also on the·architecture shelf