About this title: Venturi and Scott Brown argue, in this influential book, that the architecture of Las Vegas is highly effective because it communicates by way of flamboyant (and informative) signs rather than by the shapes of its buildings. Most of the buildings, they point out, are "decorated sheds." And they draw attention to similar buildings throughout the history of architecture.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: Revised ed.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
Date published: 1977
ISBN-13:9780262720069ISBN:026272006X
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 210 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. Minor shelf and edge wear, no markings or highlighting. Cover has some scuffing and minor scratches. A few pages are dog-eared. read more
Edition: 9th printing
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: MIT Press
Date published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780262720069ISBN:026272006X
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Pages are clean and tight, wraps have a little soiling and edge wear. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 192 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Edition: Revised ed.
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Mit Pr
Date published: 1976-12-01
ISBN-13:9780262720069ISBN:026272006X
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780262720069. read more
Edition: Revised Edition Third Printing
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Date published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780262720069ISBN:026272006X
Description: Very Good. Trade paperback with minor soil and edge wear and rubbing. A single scratch to lower portion of front cover. Internally near fine condition, text and plates clean and bright. read more
Edition: Revised ed.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
Date published: 1977
ISBN-13:9780262720069ISBN:026272006X
Description: Good. Our feedback rating says it all: Five star service and fast delivery! We have shipped four million items to happy customers, and have one MILLION unique items ready to ship today! Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 210 p. Contains: Illustrations. read more
Edition: Revised ed.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: The MIT Press
Date published: 1977
ISBN-13:9780262720069ISBN:026272006X
Description: Very Good. 026272006x. Wraps show light shelfwear. A very good sharp clean copy. Pages are clean. Light pen marking on first page. Architecture. Pasadena's finest independent new and used bookstore.; 0.5 x 8.8 x 5.9 Inches; 193 pages. read more
Edition: Revised
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Mit Pr
Date published: 1977
ISBN-13:9780262720069ISBN:026272006X
Description: New. 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. read more
Edition: Revised ed.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA and London
Date published: 1994
ISBN-13:9780262720069ISBN:026272006X
Description: Very Good. 192 pp. 8vo. Paperback. Sunning to spine, joints and front upper edge. Light shelfwear. Foxing to top edge. Revised edition. read more
Edition: 4th printing
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: MIT Press
Date published: 1980
ISBN-13:9780262720069ISBN:026272006X
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 192 p. Audience: General/trade. LIGHT PALE GREEN paperback trade with a few creases on spine o/w good. Clean endpapers were noticed and photo credits were 146 on page 192. Book is clean and has a biblio. read more
"Although Learning from Las Vegas is 37+ years old, much of the theory holds relevant. Venturi and folks criticism of modern buildings relates to much of what is still being created today. Bearers of the sustainable design flag could learn something from reading this book and applying ideas about vernacular, ornament, and decorated sheds to all fields of production and industry."
"Recommended to me by some brainy, overanalytical grad student in college, it is nonetheless a fine and relevant book for any student of design or resident of this vapid commercial strip we call America."
"Venturi has undoubtedly become the black sheep of late twentieth-century architecture. This book is part of the reason why. It's a rather bold, almost crass statement about the askew focus of Modern architecture. He compares Rome to Las Vegas, not to mention the fact that he introduced postmodern irony into architectural perspectives, which the classicists and the moderns probably weren't too thrilled about. His symbolical relativism more or less diminishes every formal masterpiece ever constructed, and he praises Las Vegas for being the ideal architectural environment for efficiently accommodating urban automobile culture. Social concern, in the context of city planning is completely absent from this text. In a way, Venturi's text is written by that of a complete postmodern provocateur, single-handedly justifying ugliness in architecture "after modernism".
Signs are important in Venturi and Brown's (his wife Denise Scott Brown) study of Las Vegas architecture. Billboards, or those big flashy neon signs that sin city is so well known for function as symbolic representations of what a particular building or structure is trying to say. Ugliness is efficient here because it represents the point of the value of the building; what it does, what is sold within, what people go to this building for. Venturi calls for the ordinary over the beautiful in approaches to a new architecture because he feels that the time period calls for it. He expresses it somewhat well in the following passage.
"Why do we uphold the symbolism of the ordinary via the decorated shed over the symbolism of the heroic via the sculptural duck? Because this is not the time and ours is not the environment for heroic communication through pure architecture. Each medium has its day, and the rhetorical environmental statements of our time-civic, commercial,or residential-will come from media more purely symbolic, perhaps less static and more adaptable to the scale of our environment. The iconography and mixed media of roadside commercial architecture will point the way, if we will look."
And indeed we have. I suppose that eyesores are eyesores for a reason. Venturi's text is certainly influential, even if it is dated. Frederic Jameson, a thinker bound to confuse readers about what Venturi was actually trying to say more than anyone else, was enormously influenced by him. We can also see in this sort of reasoning that attempt to bridge the gap between high and low art that has become so typical of the postmodern sensibility. The specter of Adorno certainly lingers. But maybe Venturi was onto something a little more useful than his postmodern contemporaries, something a little more important than a bunch of neo-marxist theorizing and empty talk about cultural hegemony. It seems to me that he was merely attempting to show people how to reevaluate ugliness with a sympathetic eye. This book is full of suggestions, and to me the most important when in an architectural sense was to see the metaphorical or symbolical value of these structures and their usefulness. The book's ideas are unquestionably dated, but its relevance and revolutionary value should not be taken for granted."
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