A review by frogwithlittlehammer
Learning from Las Vegas, Revised Edition: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form by Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, Steven Izenour

informative slow-paced

4.25

The only thing more formidable than big pants little shirt girl is big sign little building city. Aka Las Vegas. 

Part I of the book was 5 stars. Beautiful pictures of the old Las Vegas, when it was still a stark contrast among the vast expanse of the desert. Apparently Vegas is just Italy, or put in another way, a “travesty of Broadacre City”. In that, it is an almost chaotic city (its near chaos, but manages to swerve absolute chaos, and this is where its command and force majeure comes from) meant to be read from the car, and not conceived. The city’s charm lies in its desire to directly communicate through signs, rather than abstractly represent like much of modern architecture does. Night overshadows day in Las Vegas, and its copious amount of lights convey this. 

Part II was a bit more of a drag, focused more on the faults of what we consider “modern” architecture. But deducing all architecture to referential was honestly poignant, and calling out modern architecture as just a style trying to mask that fact was interesting. This is why pop art should be valued, because it’s honest, and showcases how we all make art based on things already existing. 

Overall, made me like the aesthetics of Las Vegas more and less at different points. The book acknowledged its purposeful omission of any moralistic or semiotic readings of buildings, but it would’ve been interesting to see how signs interact with meaning as well.