How Robert Venturi Helped Turn Las Vegas Into America’s Architecture #ArtTuesday
via GARAGE
In 1968, an unusual group of people attended the gala opening of the Circus Circus hotel and casino in Las Vegas: a Yale class of graduate architecture students, led by professors Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi. They had come to Las Vegas not to gamble but to learn. “Yale Professor Will Praise Strip for $8,925,” a local paper announced the day of their arrival, having learned about Venturi’s request for a study grant at city hall.
Why would anyone think they had come to praise the Strip? They could have just as easily come to bury it. “Serious architects still tend to regard exterior decoration as dishonest,” cultural critic Tom Wolfe wrote. “Electric tubing is still gauche.” Las Vegas was very different from what was taught in architecture departments such as at Yale, where students learned modernism: buildings as boxes, bare, without any decoration.
Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!