Main entry:

Venturi, Robert, author.

Title & Author:

Learning from Las Vegas / Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour.

Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, [1972]

Description:

xvi, 188 pages : illustrations ; 37 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references.
Part I : a significance for A&P parking lots, or learning from Las Vegas -- Commercial values and commerical methods -- Billboards are almost all right -- Architecture as space -- Architecture as symbol -- Symbol in space before form in space : Las Vegas as a communication system -- The architecture of persuasion -- Vast space in the historical tradition and at the A&P -- From Rome to Las Vegas -- Maps of Las Vegas : Las Vegas as a pattern of activities -- Main street and the strip -- System and order on the strip, and "twin phenomena" -- Change and permanence on the strip -- The architecture of the strip : compiling a pattern book -- The interior oasis -- Las Vegas lighting -- Architectural monumentality and the big low space -- Las Vegas styles -- Las Vegas signs -- Inclusion and the difficult order : controls and beautification -- Image of Las Vegas : inclusion and allusion in architecture -- Part II : ugly and ordinary architecture, or the decorated shed -- Some definitions using the comparative method -- The duck and the decorated shed -- Decoration on the shed -- Explicit and implicit associations -- Heroic and original, or ugly and ordinary -- Ornament : signs and symbols, denotation and connotation, heraldry and physiognomy, meaning and expression -- Is boring architecture interesting? -- Historical and other precedents : towards old architecture -- Historical symbolism and modern architecture -- The cathedral as duck and shed -- Symbolic evolution in Las Vegas -- The Renaissance and the decorated shed -- Nineteenth-century eclecticism -- Modern ornament and interior space -- The Las Vegas strip -- Urban sprawl and the megastructure -- Theory of ugly and ordinary and related and contrary theories -- Origins and further definition of ugly and ordinary -- Ugly and ordinary as symbol and style -- Against ducks, or ugly and ordinary over heroic and original, or think little -- Theories of symbolism and association in architecture -- Firmness + commodity [does not] =, delight : modern architecture and the industrial vernacular -- Industrial iconography -- Industrial styling and the cubist model -- Symbolism unadmitted -- From Latourette to Neiman-Marcus -- Slavish formalism and articulated expressionism -- Articulation as ornament -- Space as God -- Megastructures and design control -- Misplaced technological zeal -- Which technological revolution? -- Preindustrial imagery for a postindustrial era -- From Latourette to Levittown -- Silent-white majority architecture -- Social architecture and symbolism -- High-design architecture -- Summary -- Part III : essays in the ugly and ordinary : some decorated sheds -- Fire station no. 4, Columbus, Indiana, 1965 -- Varga-Brigio medical office building Bridgeton, New Jersey, 1965 -- Three buildings for Princeton Memorial Park, Hightstown, New Jersey, 1966 -- A bill-ding-board for the National Football Hall of Fame Competition, 1967 -- Submission for the Rice University Design Fete, 1967 : mini-structures for mixed media -- Mass communication on the people freeway, or Piranesi is too easy, 1967 -- From Rome to Las Vegas : an exhibit of the work of Venturi and Rauch at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, 1968 -- The Philadelphia Crosstown Community, 1968 -- Brighton Beach Housing Competition, 1968 -- Transportation Square Office Building, Washington, D.C., 1968 -- Thousand Oaks Civic Center Competition, 1969 -- Dixwell Fire Station, New Haven, Connecticut, 1970 -- A Feasibility study for Lawton Plaza, New Rochelle, New York, 1970 -- The Humanities and Social Sciences Buildings, State University of New York, Purchase, New York, 1968 and 1970 -- Yale Mathematics Building Competition, 1970 -- Addition to the Carol M. Newman Library, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Virginia, 1970 -- A development on Time Square, New York, 1970 -- Bato Warehouse, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1970 -- Eight Houses of ill-repute, 1967-1971 -- The Frug House, Princeton, New Jersey, 1966 -- The Lieb House, Loveladies, New Jersey, 1967 -- The Hersey House, Hyannisport, Massachusetts, 1968 -- The D'Agostino House, Clinton, New York, 1968 -- The Wike House, Devon, Pennsylvania, 1969 -- The Trubeck and Wislocki houses, Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, 1970 -- The Brant House, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1971 -- Renovation of St. Francis de Sales Church, Philadelphia, 1968 -- California City, 1970 -- The general plan -- Galileo Hill -- Twenty Mule Team Parkway -- Sales Office for Great Western United Corporation -- MERBISC Mart -- The Civic Center area -- A cemetary -- Appendix : on design review boards and fine arts commissions.

Summary:

Here is a plea for proper architectural humanity and humility as well as a plan for accommodating the desires and values of ordinary people who are too often being dragged along on architectural ego trips and uplift programs. It is also realistic examination of the American vernacular environment-as-it-is and a reexamination of the goal of architecture and the role of the architect. Learning from Las Vegas is addressed both to directly interested parties--architects and planners--and to the fragmented majority--the innocent bypassers who get gas at a nonpseudocolonial filling station in order to drive home to some architect's monolithic superbrutal apartmented self-monument. And whether they are producers or consumers of buildings and cities, readers will discover in this book a finely argued development of ideas illuminated by numerous and varied illustrations. The book is a delight which will induce either a burst of affirmation or a splendid rage. Venturi, Ms. Brown, and Izenour write that the lessons of Las Vegas for architects of today are as relevant as those of classical Rome were to the past century. Their book is divided into three parts. The first is an illustrated study of the iconography and symbolism of Las Vegas, with special attention to the Las Vegas "Strip"--The road leading from the airport to downtown--which leads to a head-on defense of automobile dominance and what denigrators call "urban sprawl."The middle part generalizes this viewpoint, showing by historical example how the Modern movement has led to an architecture of the Heroic and the Original. The authors prescribe what they believe is an urgently needed antidote: a new modesty, an architectural populism, and an acceptance of the Ugly and the Ordinary. The last part of the book illustrates how the theory is translated into reality: it presents the projects undertaken over the past several years by the firm of which the authors are members, Venturi and Rauch. Robert Venturi, writing about today's architect, states, "I feel the role of prima donna culture hero, even in its modern form as prima donna anticulture antihero, is a late Romantic theme as obsolete for the architect and for the complex interdependencies of architectural practice today as is the 'heroic and original' building for architecture. An architect strong on his own feet does not need this illusory support at the expense of other architects ..." The challenge is clear and forthright. Articles based on earlier versions of material in this book have already caused a great deal of controversy and rethinking. In writing the lexicon of vernacular architecture with an American accent, the authors have been denounced by some established professionals as nonarchitects, even anti-architects. But at the present uncertain point in the development of the Modern movement, it's a useful controversy that could result in a firmer sense of future direction and closer accommodation to social realities.

ISBN:

0262220156
9780262220156

Subject:

Architecture Nevada Las Vegas.
Symbolism in architecture.
Symbolisme dans l'architecture.
Symbolisme en architecture.
Architecture
Nevada Las Vegas
Architecture United States. Study examples: Nevada. Las Vegas

Form/genre:

Wrappers (Binding) NNC
Annotations (Provenance) NNC

Added entries:

Scott Brown, Denise, 1931- author.
Izenour, Steven, author.

Holdings:

Location: Library cage m 188152
Call No.: NA735.L3 V4 1972
Status: Available