Your Guide to Downtown Denise Scott Brown

Denise Scott Brown has shaped the course of contemporary architecture since the 1960s. She has chartered a rebellious course across three continents – from childhood in 1930s South Africa to education in 1950s England to teaching and practice in the United States.

Scott Brown is both renowned and misunderstood for her designs and theories, many developed in collaboration with her companion in life and work, Robert Venturi. From her 1972 research studio on Las Vegas emerged the legendary book Learning from Las Vegas, whose visuals and social impact remain as important today as then.

As a younger generation of architects and urban designers engages the complexity she defined, Scott Brown continues to raise her voice as a fierce critic of a modernism ignorant of context, history, and joint creativity. The time has come to rediscover her undogmatic formal language, careful urban interventions, and adventures in mannerism. This groundbreaking new book features previously unpublished material and offers an entirely fresh view of Scott Brown’s achievements as a preeminent architectural designer, urbanist, theoretician, and teacher. A fantastic guide to her life and ideas, it also reveals her humanism, complexity, and wit.

Published to accompany an exhibition at Architekturzentrum Wien, November 2018-March 2019.