School of architecture

Symposium focuses on influential architect

In 1972, Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, together with Steve Izenour ’69MEnvD, published their treatise Learning from Las Vegas, based on a Yale design studio. This canonical text explores architectural communication in a new kind of automobile-oriented urban landscape. Its interdisciplinary methods helped change architecture and studio teaching in fundamental ways. 

Fifty years after the publication of Learning from Las Vegas, “Denise Scott Brown: A Symposium,” convened by Frida Grahn at the school on February 8, presented new scholarship related to the groundbreaking studio methods developed by Scott Brown during her teaching career in the early 1960s. Three panels, building on chapters in the recently published anthology Denise Scott Brown In Other Eyes: Portraits of an Architect (2022), edited by Grahn, offered new perspectives on Scott Brown’s intellectual formation, her research on determinants of urban form, her concern for social factors, and her advocacy for minimal design interventions in lieu of large-scale urban renewal. It highlighted Scott Brown’s conceptual contributions, her distinct voice, and her incisive impact on architectural education and design. 

Journal presents visions for future

The 55th issue of Perspecta, the Yale architectural journal, edited by Lani Barry ’19MArch, Jeffrey Liu ’19MArch, Nicholas Miller ’19MArch, Matthew Wagstaffe ’10, ’19MArch, and Ethan Zisson ’19MArch, has been published. Based around the theme “Futures Index,” the journal takes on the prognostications of architects, consultants, engineers, and technologists past and present and creates a history of visions of the future. Essays range across five topic areas: resources, systems science, security, investments, and computation. Contributors include Ross Exo Adams, Adam Bobbette, Zeynep Çelik Alexander, Stephen J. Collier, Savannah Cox, William Deringer, Daniela Fabricius, Andreas FolkersGökçe Günel, Orit Halpern, Jack Hanly ’19MEnvD, Justin Joque, Andrew Lakoff, John LewtasNashin Mahtani, Amelyn Ng, Peter Polack, Todd Reisz ’96, ’03MArch, Fred Scharmen ’06MArch, Matthew Soules, and Lindsay Thomas. 

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