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Title:
Complexity and contradiction in architecture

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Foreword by Arthur Drexler. Introduction by Vincent Scully. First published in 1966, this book has become a reference in architectural literature. "Complexity and contradiction in architecture" expresses the postmodern rebellion against the purism of modernism. Three hundred and fifty architectural photographs serve as historical comparisons and illuminate the author's ideas on creating and experiencing architecture.

Title:
Vu depuis le Capitol, et autres textes

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Robert Venturi est reconnu comme l'un des grands architectes-théoriciens du XXe siècle. Vu depuis le Capitole (qui aurait tout aussi bien pu s'intituler De Michel-Ange à McDonald) rassemble dix-sept articles écrits avec son associée, Denise Scott Brown, entre 1953 et 1982, et publiés à l'origine dans des revues d'architecture. Ils y livrent leurs réflexions sur l'histoire de l'architecture depuis la Renaissance et le baroque et, concernant les XIXe et XXe siècles, évoquent aussi bien l'Ecole des beaux-arts que Frank Furness, Sir Edwin Lutyens, Alvar Aalto ou l'influence de la pop culture américaine sur l'architecture.

Title:
Las Vegas Studio: images from the archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

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$57.50
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Since it was first published in 1972, Learning from Las Vegas has become a classic in the theory of architecture, and one of the most influential architectural texts of the twentieth century. The treatise by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour enjoys a reputation as a signal work of postmodernism in architecture and urban planning. However, despite of the book’s prestige, none of the editions have ever featured high-quality color images of the field research Venturi, Brown, and Izenour conducted in Las Vegas and used to illustrate their argument. Las Vegas Studio presents for the first time these significant photographs in large color reproductions.

Title:
Iconography and electronics upon a generic architecture

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$36.95
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This book is among the most influential books by any achitect of our era, it's celebrating complexity in architecture. This new collection of writings in a variety of genres argues for a generic architecture defined by iconography and electronics, an architecture whose elemental qualities become shelter and symbol.

Title:
De l'ambiguité en architecture

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$42.95
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Manifeste autant qu'analyse, cet ouvrage constitue un plaidoyer pour la nécessité d'un superflu. S'élevant contre les excès du fonctionalisme ambiant, Robert Venturi montre, à l'aide de quelques deux cents exemples puisés dans le patrimoine commun des civilisations occidentales qu'une œuvre architecturale répond à plusieurs fins : il démontre qu'il est possible d'assurer la complexité et la contradiction et, sans nuire à la fonction, de doter l'œuvre d'une ambiguïté enrichissante.

Title:
Learning from Las Vegas : the forgotten symbolism of architectural form - revised edition

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"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 architectural work of the firm Venturi and Rauch, is not included in the revision.) The new paperback edition has a smaller format, fewer pictures. 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.

Title:
Architecture as signs and systems for a mannerist time

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$45.95
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Robert Venturi exploded onto the architectural scene in 1966 with a radical call to arms in "Complexity and Contradiction". Further accolades and outrage ensued in 1972 when Venturi and Denise Scott Brown (along with Steven Izenour) analyzed the Las Vegas strip as an archetype in "Learning from Las Vegas". Now, for the first time, these two observer-designer-theorists turn their iconoclastic vision onto their own remarkable partnership and the rule-breaking architecture it has informed. The views of Venturi and Scott Brown have influenced architects worldwide for nearly half a century. Pluralism and multiculturalism; symbolism and iconography; popular culture and the everyday landscape; generic building and electronic communication are among the many ideas they have championed. Here, they present both a fascinating retrospective of their life work and a definitive statement of its theoretical underpinnings. Accessible, informative, and beautifully illustrated, Architecture as Signs and Systems is a must for students of architecture and urban planning, as well as anyone intrigued by these seminal cultural figures. Venturi and Scott Brown have devoted their professional lives to broadening our view of the built world and enlarging the purview of practitioners within it. By looking backward over their own life work, they discover signs and systems that point forward, toward a humane Mannerist architecture for a complex, multicultural society.

Title:
L'enseignement de Las Vegas

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" L'enseignement de Las Vegas constitue une documentation brillante sur notre temps, un compte rendu, sous un angle théorique, de notre héritage architectural et un ouvrage qui se sert de l'histoire d'une manière intelligente, habile et créatrice :c'est rare. Voilà donc un livre à contester, à critiquer, mais qu'il faut lire. Tous ces petits points de controverse s'enroulent en une spirale débouchant sur des questions philosophiques où la nature même de l'architecture est impliquée. " Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Ce livre, publié pour la première fois en américain en 1971, est devenu un ouvrage essentiel dans la théorie de l'architecture. Son influence est comparable a celle de Vers une architecture de Le Corbusier.

Title:
Learning from Las Vegas, facsimile edition

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$131.00
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Upon its publication by the MIT Press in 1972, "Learning from Las Vegas" was immediately influential and controversial. The authors made an argument that was revolutionary for its time—that the billboards and casinos of Las Vegas were worthy of architectural attention—and offered a challenge for contemporary architects obsessed with the heroic and monumental. The physical book itself, designed by MIT’s iconic designer Muriel Cooper, was hailed as a masterpiece of modernist design, but the book’s design struck the authors as too monumental for a text that praised the ugly and ordinary over the heroic and monumental. The MIT Press published a revised version in 1977—a modest paperback that the authors felt was more in keeping with the argument of the book—and the original Cooper-designed book fell out of print and became a highly sought-after collectors’ item; it now sells for thousands of dollars in the rare book market, while the author-redesigned paperback has remained continuously in print at a price affordable to students. Now, decades after the original hardcover edition sold out, the MIT Press is publishing a facsimile edition of the original large-format Cooper-designed edition of Learning from Las Vegas, complete with translucent glassine wrap. This edition also features a spirited preface by Denise Scott Brown, looking back on the creation of the book and explaining her and Robert Venturi’s reservations about the original design.