]Aarhus – Las Vegas[

In 1968, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour and eleven students visited Las Vegas to investigate and map ‘The Strip’ and its architecture, urban form and iconographic logic. The result became the book, ‘Learning from Las Vegas’ from 1972, which presented a new perspective on the modern city and introduced a series of new graphic representation forms of the city, with inspiration from both classical references and present contemporary art.

In 1999, Tom Nielsen, Peter Hemmersam and Boris Brorman Jensen visited Las Vegas with the book ‘Learning from Las Vegas’ in hand and the intention of mapping the present situation and updating the game-changing book. The visual result of their investigation was the exhibition ]Aarhus – Las Vegas[, where the American ideal city is compared to developments back home in Denmark.

‘Your use of our Las Vegas studies as a point of departure for your own studies of the emerging modern city in Las Vegas and Aarhus is one of the best uses we have seen of our work. Much of the time our ideas are misused.’

– Denise Scott Brown

See the exhibition catalogue here.