"Doing It Deadpan:" Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour’s Learning from Las Vegas

Abstract

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour’s Learning from Las Vegas (1972) — a collection of the architects’ studies of the Las Vegas Strip, a segment of U.S. Route 91 — is packed with information graphics. The designer Muriel Cooper conveys the vividness of the Strip to the reader by aerial photographs, snapshots, signage, diagrams, all manner of maps, plans, elevations, sections, heraldry, graphs, sketches, charts and lists. Viewed randomly or in succession, these elements visually reconstruct Las Vegas as the epitome of the commercial roadside environment rich with signs. Considered from this perspective, Learning from Las Vegas exemplifies what the statistician and information designer Edward Tufte refers to as "escaping the flatland [of two-dimensions] and enriching the density of data displays" so that those displays are compatible, to whatever extent possible, with our lived experiences.