When Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown first released their text Learning From Las Vegas in 1972 the idea of the importance of unity or disunity of vision created within the visual environment by urban patterning and built form had been greatly neglected.
Perhaps, the shock of the everyday assisted in alerting the design professions to the importance of the prosaic nature (common v heroic) of the constructed urban environment even where hyper-reality is the norm.
The text is credited with re-humanising the built environment through its influence in promoting and disseminating the tenets of the emerging Postmodern movement.
Learning from Las Vegas continues to influence in surprising and controversial ways the thinking of designers including landscape designers and multi-media designers through its insightful analysis of the visual environment.
Viewing the original photographs of Denise Scott Brown is a revelation in perception and an eye for beauty in the ordinary.
Source: http://www.stuffintheair.com/weather-underground-vegas.html
Scott Brown Photographs [http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/1996064.article]
Landscape [http://landscapeandurbanism.blogspot.com/2009/08/reading-list-learning-from-las-vegas.html]
The influence of Robert Venturi on the National Gallery Extension in Trafalgar Square was very good. His building respected the context in many ways – and I wish other architects working in London had learned more from this example. As with so many other environmental professionals, London architects are very much better at learning to say they right things than at learning how to do the right things, Richard Rogers design for Chelsea Barracks being a case in point: http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/2009/06/28/richard-rogers-sustainable-design-for-chelsea-barracks/
Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi’s Postmodern questioning of the everyday in Las Vegas seems positively Utopian in the light of the Post postmodern digital dystopia. [http://www.tate.org.uk/intermediaart/desert_of_the_digital.shtm]