In 1968 married architects Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi took their Yale students on a trip to Las Vegas where they drew, photographed, and filmed the city, analyzing how commercialism had shaped the strip and examining everyday details previously ignored by urbanism. The resulting student research project was eventually published as a book, Learning from Las Vegas. Rather than exposing urban vulgarity, the thousands of photographs taken in the name of architectural study a slice of mid-century Americana that is simply, and inadvertently stunning — which is why they, in turn, became a book
as well.
A selection of these will be on view as part of Las Vegas Studio: Images from the Archive of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, which opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles on March 21. Preview more images after the jump.
