Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. image © Frank Hanswijk

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) announced that Denise Scott Brown named as 2016 Gold Medal Recipient.  Rober Venturi and Denis Scott Brown are in the institute's top honor by collaborating with AIA for 55 years- now 84-year-old Denise Scott Brown has been awarded the 2016 AIA Gold Medal. If followed from the history, Denis Scott Brown did not win the Pritzker Prize when it was awarded to Robert Venturi back in 1991, which was an obvious omission for the history. 

Venturi and Brown have long enhanced the popular appreciation of architecture, with their whimsical forms that play off historical precedents and their writing in support of everyday building types that might otherwise be disregarded mentioned by AIA. Venturi’s 1966 book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, and Venturi and Scott-Brown’s 1972 book Learning from Las Vegas (with Steven Izenour) remain more than required reading for every architecture student. They are touchstones for three generations of architects in thinking critically and designing thoughtfully. 

Mielparque Nikko Kirifuri Hotel and Spa. image © Kawasumi Architectural Photograph Office

“Their writings have deeply affected the profession, in the USA and the whole world," says Cesar Pelli, FAIA, writing in support of their nomination. Together, the books draw in cultural observations, field research, historical context, and a deep understanding of architecture as a creative field as well as a multifarious vocation.

Vanna Venturi House, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. image via Wikipedia.

“At the intersection of historicism and pop art, Bob and Denise began a conversation in 1960 that continues to change our profession and profoundly influence how each of us as architects can change the world," says Frank Gehry, FAIA, writing in support of their nomination for the AIA Gold Medal. Working as "two great intellects, instead of one ego," he wrote, their work "broke open the field of architecture to revisit history in a freshly modern way."

image © Tom Bernard

“Learning from the existing landscape is a way of being revolutionary for an architect,” Venturi, ScottBrown, and Izenour wrote in the book’s opening salvo. “Not the obvious way, which is to tear down Paris and begin again, as Le Corbusier suggested in the 1920s, but another, more tolerant way; that is, to question how we look at things.”....Continue Reading

National gallery, Sainsbury wing. image © Timothy Soar

> via aia.org