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Title: Learning from Las Vegas - Revised Edition: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form by Robert Venturi, Steven Izenour, Denise Scott Brown ISBN: 0-262-72006-X Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 15 June, 1977 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (4 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: An Architectural Nightmare
Comment: This is a quite unusual and offbeat treatise on architectural theory, as applied to the world's greatest architectural monstrosity - Las Vegas. This analysis from the early 1970s is obviously outdated because Las Vegas hadn't yet become the monument to megalomania and excess that it is today, but it was already well on its way. The authors analyze Vegas' unique usages of space, lighting, placement, transportation, and building design for the purposes of communication and promotion. Strange chapter titles give a clue to the left-field analysis in store, and the authors have a clear sense of irony, underhandedly implying that Vegas presents the worst in architecture while they appear to be praising its uniqueness. Unfortunately the narrative gets bogged down in dense professor-speak terminology like "Brazilianoid" and "neo-Constructivist megastructures," along with a general overload of obtuse theory. Add to that the poor-quality and under-elaborated illustrations and you have a book that sacrifices insight and readability in favor of pedantic attempts to impress the authors' colleagues. [~doomsdayer520~]
Rating: 3
Summary: Read this book to learn what you shouldn't do as an architec
Comment: Read this book to learn what you shouldn't do as an architect!
This book follows Venturi's "Complexity and Contradiction", where you can learn how cynically to use casement windows in housing for the elderly where the elderly will happily put their plastic flowers in the windows, but *you* secretly know these are not really hormal casement windows, since they are out of scale (like fascist architecture's lack of scale?).
This book will tell you about ducks and decorated sheds, but it will tell you nothing about building spaces which nourish creative human community. Try Louis Kahn (e.g., John Lobell's lovely little book "Between Silence and Light"). My postmodernist teachers at Harvard said Kahn's writings were incomprehensible, which says more about them than about him.
Read Lobell's book and learn why, e.g., a city might deserve to exist. Remember: Only *you* can get beyond postmodernism!
Rating: 5
Summary: Brilliant study of signage and architecture
Comment: Robert Venturi's study of the Las Vegas signage phenomena and it's impact on "architecture" is brilliant in it's scope. While written almost twenty five years ago, this book gains more and more pertinence as we as a society progress further into a "reality" of symbols, reproductions and representations. These words and thoughts are basically essential to the understanding of any city anymore, not just Las Vegas. Where this book misses the mark though is in the execution, as shown in Venturi's work, of these ideas. The projects put forth seem to pale in comparison to the implications the text actually has. These notions of architecture are by far some of the most relevant and important in modern theory today, it is unfortunate that their full potential could not be realized in these projects.... but maybe that is for you and I to do.
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Title: Robert Venturi: Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by Robert Venturi ISBN: 0870702823 Publisher: Museum of Modern Art, New York Pub. Date: 15 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan by Rem Koolhaas ISBN: 1885254008 Publisher: The Monacelli Press Pub. Date: December, 1997 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier ISBN: 0486250237 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 February, 1985 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Architecture of the City by Aldo Rossi, Diane Ghirardo, Joan Ockman ISBN: 0262680432 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 13 September, 1984 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: S,M,L,Xl by Rem Koolhaas, Bruce Mau, Hans Werlemann ISBN: 1885254865 Publisher: The Monacelli Press Pub. Date: May, 1998 List Price(USD): $75.00 |
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