From Piazza to Strip: Reflections on Landscape in the Writings and Projects of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

The concept of “landscape” in the works of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, far from being an ideological one, is strictly intertwined with its concrete use, physical perception and anthropological meaning. The two Philadelphian architects referred to that more often as “urban context”, implying not only its spatial qualities—such as scale and proportion—but also suggesting the spontaneous generation of relations—both material and immaterial—of the city. Through a selection of writings and buildings, my paper investigates the evolution of the reflections on urban landscape by Venturi and Scott Brown, from their earlier thoughts on the qualities of Italian cities, to the “survey” of the city of Las Vegas in the Sixties, and the resulting ways those ideas became interpreted and materialized in their architectural and urban projects.