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Title:
Learning from Las Vegas : the forgotten symbolism of architectural form - revised edition

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$39.95
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Summary:
"Learning from Las Vegas" created a healthy controversy on its appearance in 1972, calling for architects to be more receptive to the tastes and values of "common" people and less immodest in their erections of "heroic," self-aggrandizing monuments. This revision includes the full texts of part I of the original, on the Las Vegas strip, and part II, "Ugly and ordinary architecture, or the decorated shed," a generalization from the findings of the first part on symbolism in architecture and the iconography of urban sprawl. (The final part of the first edition, on the architectural work of the firm Venturi and Rauch, is not included in the revision.) The new paperback edition has a smaller format, fewer pictures. There are an added preface by Scott Brown and a bibliography of writings by the members of Venturi and Rauch and about the firm's work.

Title:
L'enseignement de Las Vegas

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$39.50
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Summary:
" L'enseignement de Las Vegas constitue une documentation brillante sur notre temps, un compte rendu, sous un angle théorique, de notre héritage architectural et un ouvrage qui se sert de l'histoire d'une manière intelligente, habile et créatrice :c'est rare. Voilà donc un livre à contester, à critiquer, mais qu'il faut lire. Tous ces petits points de controverse s'enroulent en une spirale débouchant sur des questions philosophiques où la nature même de l'architecture est impliquée. " Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Ce livre, publié pour la première fois en américain en 1971, est devenu un ouvrage essentiel dans la théorie de l'architecture. Son influence est comparable a celle de Vers une architecture de Le Corbusier.

Title:
Learning from Las Vegas, facsimile edition

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Price:
$131.00
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Summary:
Upon its publication by the MIT Press in 1972, "Learning from Las Vegas" was immediately influential and controversial. The authors made an argument that was revolutionary for its time—that the billboards and casinos of Las Vegas were worthy of architectural attention—and offered a challenge for contemporary architects obsessed with the heroic and monumental. The physical book itself, designed by MIT’s iconic designer Muriel Cooper, was hailed as a masterpiece of modernist design, but the book’s design struck the authors as too monumental for a text that praised the ugly and ordinary over the heroic and monumental. The MIT Press published a revised version in 1977—a modest paperback that the authors felt was more in keeping with the argument of the book—and the original Cooper-designed book fell out of print and became a highly sought-after collectors’ item; it now sells for thousands of dollars in the rare book market, while the author-redesigned paperback has remained continuously in print at a price affordable to students. Now, decades after the original hardcover edition sold out, the MIT Press is publishing a facsimile edition of the original large-format Cooper-designed edition of Learning from Las Vegas, complete with translucent glassine wrap. This edition also features a spirited preface by Denise Scott Brown, looking back on the creation of the book and explaining her and Robert Venturi’s reservations about the original design.