“Las Vegas is not the subject of our book,” Denise Scott Brown declared in the preface to the 1977 second edition of Learning from Las Vegas, originally published in 1972 and cowritten with Robert Venturi and Steven Izenour.1 What that subject might be is something that critics, historians, and architects have been trying to figure out for the last half century. Why should architects and students focus on popular and commercial developments in a place such as Las Vegas? Is it a problem if they suspend critical, aesthetic, or moral judgment? And how can such a study nourish contemporary architecture—with what effect—and for whom? These are also questions whose meaning and relevance for architecture have changed over time.
Eyes That Saw: Architecture after Las Vegas is one of several recent books that examine the significance and the legacy of Learning from Las Vegas. It collects about twenty...
University of California Press