"Their insight and analysis, reasoned back through the history of style
and symbolism and forward to the recognition of a new kind of building
that responds directly to speed, mobility, the superhighway and changing
life styles, is the kind of art history and theory that is rarely
produced. The rapid evolution of modern architecture from Le Corbusier
to Brazil to Miami to the roadside motel in a brief 40-year span, with
all the behavioral esthetics involved, is something neither architect
nor historian has deigned to notice...."
-- Ada Louise Huxtable, "The New York TImes" "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.
This revision includes the full texts of Part I of the original, on the
Las Vegas strip, and Part II, "Ugly and Ordinary Architecture, or the
Decorated Shed, " a generalization from the findings of the first part
on symbolism in architecture and the iconography of urban sprawl. (The
final part of the first edition, on the architectureal work of the firm
Venturi and Rauch, is not included in the revision.) The new paperback
edition has a smaller format, fewer pictures, and a considerably lower
price than the original. There are an added preface by Scott Brown and a
bibliography of writings by the members of Venturi and Rauch and about
the firm's work.