“Denise Scott Brown: A Symposium” (Yale School of Architecture)

In 1972, Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, together with Steve Izenour, published their treatise Learning from Las Vegas. 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,” organized by Frida Grahn, presents 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 Frida Grahn, offer 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 highlights Scott Brown’s conceptual contributions, her distinct voice and incisive impact on architectural education and design.

 

 

1:30 p.m.

Welcome and Introduction

Deborah Berke, Frida Grahn, and Mary McLeod

 

2:00 p.m.

Panel 1: The Nonjudgmental Attitude: Learning from Three Continents

Craig Lee

Valéry Didelon

Katherine Smith

Moderator: Surry Schlabs

 

4:00 p.m.

Panel 2: The City in Flux: Form, Forces, and Functions

Lee Ann Custer

Sylvia Lavin

Denise Costanzo

Moderator: Elihu Rubin

 

6:30 p.m.

Panel 3: Make no Big Plans: South Street vs. Co-op City

Sarah Moses

Joan Ockman

Frida Grahn

Moderator: Izzy Kornblatt

 

7:30 p.m.

Closing Remarks

Denise Scott Brown