Full Circle

A small crowd dutifully tag teamed in and out of “Denise Scott Brown: A Symposium,” a seven-hour marathon of panels and conversations at the Yale School of Architecture. A Festschrift in spirit, if not in name, the event—hosted by Frida Grahn—gathered academics , Sylvia Lavin, Joan Ockman, Elihu Rubin, Surry Schlabs, and others to consider Scott Brown’s pedagogical legacy on the fiftieth anniversary of Learning from Las Vegas. Participating via Zoom, Scott Brown wasn’t able to savor the emotional full circle of returning to the very school at which she and Robert Venturi taught the 1968 studio course that yielded the book and transformed architectural education.

Early in the festivities, Schlabs asked presenters Craig Lee, , and Katherine Smith to reflect on the criticism that has dogged Scott Brown and Venturi for half a century: that for all their concern with class, VSB nimbly and repeatedly sidestepped politics. The conversants more or less followed suit. But one audience member, a participant in that famous studio, ventured to stake a claim: “It was 1968,” he said. “Everything was political.”