A Review On Robert Venturi’s ‘Learning From Las Vegas’ Book

The aim of this study is to analyze; academician, architect and architectural theorist Robert Venturi’s groundbreaking books in the world of architecture;’Learning from Las Vegas’ and ‘Re-Learning from Las Vegas’, in terms of postmodern urban design. For this purpose, the study focuses onthe different dynamics of architecture and tries to reveal the effects and contributions of the local context to thearchitectural concept and urban design with the contradictions and complexities it creates. The study that dealswith the dynamics of architecture, apart from the space, in terms of local context via Las Vegas Boulevard; examines dynamics such as communication / symbolic / non-architect architecture. Hence, while referring to post-modernism, a period of pivotal architecture, he particularly focuses on ; Learning from Las Vegas; to explain how the Everyday urban landscape of Venturi’s Las Vegas Strip, emerged eclectically and quickly. In the article, the architecture of Las Vegas Strip, which was the beginning of post-modernism in the 1960s, has been discussed in terms of urban design and urban landscape, focusing on the reflections of symbolic (sign) architecture and eclecticism. The everyday design philosophy of the boulevard is examined. While discussing Venturi’s discourse on ‘what we need to learn from Las Vegas’, it is also intended to reveal why he actually praises everyday architecture. Venturi, who is a member of the advisory board of Princeton University's School of Architecture and Urban Design, clearly demonstrated the philosophy of architecture in the book "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture" presented in 1966; Again for the first time in this work, he responded to Mies Van Der Rohe, who is known with the phrase "Less is more", with "Less is bore" (less boring). Therefore, in the study, the understanding of urban design that emerged in the post-modern period has been investigated through Venturi’s interpretations and works, and an analysis has been made on how architecture, a local context consisting of symbols and hangars has a wide impact in the world.