This is ninety nine percent, invisible, I'm roman, Mars on the University of Pennsylvania Campus. There's this gorgeous old library, which is school of designs, library of fine arts and architecture it was designed. By architect, Frank furnace It looks like a red, brick and terror caught a palace producer, every problem, its these leaded glass windows in this very elaborate roof articulated with lots of pointy ornaments and attack the story Rotunda reading room. According to website it is a seminal library design. It expresses function, while merging the imagery of a cathedral and railroad station. Could be set for any number of scenes and Harry Potter. It's a national historic landmark. It was completed in eighteen, Now you may know the furnace library at that payments are one

the full nineteenth century building. This is Denise Scott Brown, who studied urban planning at pen and then taught there and at my first faculty, meeting they were considering whether the architecture school should support the planned demolish the feathers library, nineteen sixty when architects were very into tearing down old buildings. Newborn would dream of touching it now. But then I was rebel and saying that, and there was the big debate and the deal was on the other side. He wanted it demolished. It was worth modernist would do you see, Nineteen. Sixty architects thought we should be getting rid of old frilly architecture and constructing new modern affair, buildings of glass and steel and concrete they need on the other hand, was cut over modernism. Now that you didn't like glass, Ass, an stealing concrete and she liked the buildings themselves. She just I'm tired of the philosophy behind modernism, she's, tired of architects impose

in their sleek utopian visions on people without first asking people what they wanted. It was stupid innocence to say we don't have to listen to people, they don't know what they want. We can tell them what they what you want, and we will be so good for them, and so in her first ever faculty meeting he's took a stand, imagine her in her late twenties with red hair and an accent shaped a childhood in South Africa and an education in London. She battled the dean to convince the rest of the faculty that this old library should be seen that there's something to observing and appreciating the architecture that already around us and she them over the whole faculty fine They agreed with me, but not before a lot of argument and all of that. This young man came up to me and he said I agreed with everything you said and my name's Robert when jury, and I said

well. Why didn't you say something then Robert than to worry another young faculty member. Then what admitted at the meeting. It wasn't will there be into extravagant old buildings, then inventory it was already kind of an outsider. He was struggling and of the people. There was saying shouldn't be there he's not like us? He likes history. They didn't go to Harvard while he went at Princeton, but he wasn't from a fancy family and yes, he was really into historical architecture and any Scott Brown. He found a kindred spirits they began to share ideas and research. They were both Very into mannerism, which is eight Renaissance style of architecture that has a lot of complex decoration, exaggerated visual tricks, not unlike the library, its elaborate fun. Then he's got Brown and Robert inventory were clearly on the same page. They taught court

as in conjunction with each other, for nineteen sixty two sixty five. I ran one theories coarse and he ran the other and we planned them together. A colleague pen was so bold as to suggest Denise You should Mary, Robert Wintery, but it wasn't like that. The niece was actually a young widow at the time she had lost. Husband in a car crash. Pretty recently, she wasn't interested inventory that way, at least not yet we were good friends Don't forget: I'd lost her husband. I was a very sad person. Denise did, however, want to take her friend robber victory to a very special place. Is she considered? The anti Modernism a place them. Most of her colleagues and architecture and urban planning looked at with disdain, LAS Vegas.

Fabulous: LAS Vegas LAS Vegas. And what happens in Vegas, never really stays there together their Denise Scott Brown and Robert victory would find lessons LAS Vegas that would spur anew. Who chapter in architecture To this day, architects, They turn their nose up at LAS Vegas. Las Vegas is still a very controversial topic. Among architects, who typically dismiss the city is a step in a practising architect and author of the book. The strap LAS Vegas the architecture of the american dream. Every time I told my colleagues, I study LAS Vegas. I get a few friends from architecture, perspective, it's a city, that's known for me, on a city known for decoration, casino, no, four and its

exactly the opposite of what convent trained architects would like, but people Love Vegas last sheer, there was about forty five million people that visited LAS Vegas, and that was ten million more than in the city of Paris, clear here, we're not talking about downtown LAS Vegas were talking about the LAS Vegas Strip, long stretch of road, flanked by casinos. Yeah said Some people know that the strip is actually not built in the city of LAS Vegas. Is actually just outside a city limits and as a result, developers and not as much restricted by cities, owning laws or city council, and they have more leeway as so to say which why the vaguest strip is never one static thing. It goes through radical changes almost every decade since

whole stretch of the strip is geared entirely to what will bring in the most tourists is designed for. What's popular at a given time will make as much money as possible as soon as The buildings is no longer profitable or as soon as they realize they can. Actually build a more profitable building than is work for them to employ two previous building in and build something new in this The biggest has always been constantly remaking itself, depending on what tourist want it's designed. And an redesigned over and over again for its victims. Very first casino hotel complex on the strip, was called L. Rancho Vegas had a western theme list, part of the advertising was brief, rested boot senior year, western outfits, where your hats, in the nineteen forties western movies were popular and the west, The made gambling seem a little more patriotic and ragged You know it's. What cowboys did you

have gambling in a wild West town, a real, authentic wild west. Town, there were never ever any cowboys in LAS Vegas and so a lift from the very beginning, LAS Vegas Architecture, was where you could call and then in the nineteen fifty years as the fake western fad, got hired out. They trade it in for fake midcentury, suburban glamour, it really gambling into a suburban vacation, they were all the glamorous bungalows with kidney shaped pools, but all the more or less the same said then in the signs, starting with Stardust Hotel in casino, the stern, as was the first big whores ample sign, really big over two hundred feet. Long

like a giant explosion and bear in mind. This was also a period in which we see the space race starts to begin start ass up the ante on the competition between the hotels and the strap more and more massive hotels part that, with bigger and bigger signs, these were all sides that were animated and it was really can sophisticated technology that went into these structures. It was only because the competition was was so intense and it was so much at stake by them. Nineteen Sixty is a LAS Vegas Strip was a cacophony eating me on all these Hugh. Jarring size almost calling out over each other, and that's what the Strip look like when Denise Scott Brown first encountered it. I had a cold shiver up my spine and I said: is this love or is this hate? I said I don't know I said fauchelevent anyway before it goes. She first visited Vegas in nineteen

sixty five after she had left pan to take a job at Berkeley. Unlike the modernists, who would ignore a messy place like LAS Vegas he's found herself curious about it. Given her ground in urbanism in planning. She was interest in observing the habits and patterns of people LAS Vegas was a place. People voted for with their feet. They went there in droves. They really showed they liked. It may either spent money to be in it. The nineteen sixty ship was the exact opposite of what modern architects thought the world should look like. It was loud, garish and dazzling, it was full blown populism and this is what Denise loved the strip she knew she had to show. Robert inventory Bob was the only person I invited to LAS Vegas cause. He was the only one interested and then he adjust adored it in nineteen sixty six Denise Scott,

and Robert than to re spent four days in LAS Vegas, marvelling at it. Bob and I went to LAS Vegas, and we have this wonderful time together and suddenly, He became much more relaxed human being, which refer to grasp drove the strip. We had music on, we stopped in the desert and we took pictures each other. We look at the joy and the vases of those pictures and you see what's happening. You can go Pictures of Denise and Robert grinning on the strip, and yet You can really see it. We fell in love. But your five years of working together. It happened in four days in Vegas we want a bar, and suddenly we held hands. That's about all that happened. I mean began to get more and more fond of each other. After a little back and forth Denise, at Brown, eventually move back to the EAST coast and then one day and a taxi,

I just said to him: will you marry me- and he said yes and yes and yes, Robert Centurion Dundee Scott Brown got married in nineteen sixty seven and together they went to teach at Yale but even though she was on the other side of the country, Denise wasn't and with LAS Vegas, not in the least teaching, Denise had taken great pains to include the elements of observation and what better spy to observe and strip it, the epitome of sprawl of loud advertisements of shopping centres, it was american culture on steroids extreme cases usually appear a case. I think, if you look at scientific study, is often done, that let's get the most extreme version and then from that we can know. What's the point suppose we look for them and other places, she, and rather than Tory, resolve to bring their students to the Strip said they could

yet themselves Voluntary and Scott Brown planned twelve weeklong studio study LAS Vegas for thirteen students ten day This course would actually be spent on the strip itself. They were all puts up at the Stardust a brown inventory got calmed rooms for them and all the students took full advantage. If the freedom they had off campus we'd have noticed when we went into their their rooms smell of marijuana, because I just didn't know that spell out in the field under Denise and Robert. I, the stew, instead a lot of watching and took many many photographs, some of which were take from reclusive millionaire. Howard Hughes is helicopter. He made available on always use of one of his helicopters. That was very useful. We got very good pictures and wisdom

this help the students finagle their way into the grand opening gala, the circus, circus casino, and they had got themselves dressed up. They went to the thrift shop in LAS Vegas in the midst of a fine. The students were still really engaged with the labour of truly Looking at a place, the students observed traffic patterns conducted interviews. Made maps and diagrams, basically, all the things architecture, students normally due to observe Athens or Rome, but this time. They were sitting in drawing sketches of parking lots. We had a set of topics many of them were patterns of distribution like where Archer she's in LAS Vegas, compared with New Haven where are raging chap of people. The distribution lapse Denise compared the strip to a bizarre or marketplace built on a scale for cars for a market as a foot market. When you see

the actual goods in a window of the store smell them when you arrive in the market but on the strip instead of the sites and smells of the items for sale or the merchant hollering and peddling goods? There are signs that call out and beckoned to you. What's this answer me of a big LAS Vegas. Science has its high reader, it's no Rita. How does that really in relations a small sign. Well, all of them put on the site harder drawer you in? Where do you see them from an in observing the strip and the way cars I'll, never get found LAS Vegas worked I served their purpose. The strip was navigable. It functions in the midst of its apparent chaos. Like there would be an arabian themed sign for an arabian themed, casino and venues advert as the evenings performers in big lights. Everything was,

spelled out very clearly in a way that was appealing to people and so robber victory and any sky brown, took all the maps and notes and observations that they and the students had collected and together with their teaching assistant and co, author Stephen Eyes an hour. They put it all in a book a book. Published in nineteen. Seventy two called learn from LAS Vegas. What happens ex everyone reads that book. This is our texture and design critic, Alexander Lange and she says: learning from LAS Vegas challenged architects to take the architecture, a Vegas, what they called the architecture of the american highway seriously and that it too has a structure, and it too has lessons, are weak world and what we can learn from him. It's not just saying, hey Vegas his cord saying here the whole approach to the world that we actually the out there in the world and what we can learn from them. It's not just saying

hey big, as is called saying here, the whole approach to the world we actually lemon and truly One studying architecture read this book. Why didn't catch on because people what were searching for a way out of the dead end, the dead, modernism endless book written? I kind of the coolest kids in architecture, seemed I it might be that way out by nineteen. Eighty learning from LAS Vegas it becomes a text assigned in every architectures goal, and that is a huge deal because it means american architects can ignore the built environment all around them. Although when Tory got most of the credit, I never get the famous oak, its Robert venturing and more said wife doing hanging in there, but learning LAS Vegas derives from the nieces experience on the strap which she then invited inventory along for not to mention the nieces background, an observation and planning

I believe that spaces should be designed with people in mind the idea architecture needed to say something to the maximum number of people, not just to people who were educated in the themes of architecture then Turkey, Scott Brown, loved the historical elements of architecture that anyone could recognise, and so they say you know what people love houses, gables people like their banks to have columns out front. So let's do that column, can signify that a building is important since their associated with banks and government buildings, a triangular roof means that the building is a house. If those let's hope people to understand the building. Architects should just go I had an anthem, Denise and Robert puts some of these ideas into practice in their own work. One of the more extreme examples as their design for the children's Museum of Houston. They put these oversized greek columns and the front

what signal that it's a museum, but because it's a children's museum, the columns are bright. Canary, yellow and the columns hold up a massive sign that says: museum in big red letters, You don't have to wonder if you ve made it to the right spot, it's pretty clear and they did this for adult museums to Brazil. Potency apple, art museum, there's a a sign on the top of the building just says ass, a M Sappho ART Museum is very big. I mean all their buildings had giant overt signs on them. But the point is Albert venturing, Denise got Brown were not afraid of signs, they were not afraid of color. They were not Fraid of historical motifs, their work in their architecture and writing. Is about making sure buildings were accessible and understandable to as many people as possible, and this man, into one of the most controversial movements in architecture. Postmodernism Postmodernism was away for buildings to beat

Munich active, deeply, meaningful and fun. Although the problem is a lot of designers just focused on the fun part, so some this modern architecture. Tags the jazzy ness of vague, yes, takes the cut takes the neon and that becomes one form of postmodernism. A lot of our Jackson, designers were just like cool. Now we can use neon and bright colors and big signs and slap on historic, styles and details without any meaning just for the fun of it. In other words it in part of the aesthetics of the eighties bright colors, bold, shapes this is what a lot of people mean by an aesthetic of postmodernism, this kind of goofy without substance. Goes in all of these different directions and I think to needs Brown really hate some of those directions because they don't have their interpretive quality that they brought to their version on modernism,

and, as Postmodernism became sillier and sillier its strayed. Fur and further away from what Denny Scott Brown and Robert victory were originally trying to do. It became hard for claims to see how deeply intentional and thoughtful their work was you. It was like one triumph to another after they wrote that book by any means we probably had more work. If we haven't done with their books, buildings championing places like the LAS Vegas Strap. There are definitely times when they didn't have them many clients, and it was very difficult for them to get work ultra, Lee Postmodernism popularity was short lived. So what happened with post modernism? Is it really did not last very long as an architectural move, and it has basically a ten year proximately tenure, hey day, you can say a kind of early eighties, too early Ninetys, and then it just goes really out of fashion. The clients serve revert back to wanting things that

modernist an architecture revert back to its previous form. People go back to wanting faceless buildings in shades of grand black made of us and steel in the people want it losses, Yes, well, deliver it s, a that's it irony of adult architect and Strip historian, Stefan how again, as they publish the book learning from LAS Vegas and was biggest becomes known, as maybe the birth place of pose modernism and sell rating signage and moving away from boring modernism. This is actually when LAS Vegas turns to the opposite, ever, Vegas was ahead of the curve. The strip had already started to revert to corporate modernism. Even before learning from LAS Vegas was published in nineteen. Sixty seven, the state of Nevada, passes the corporate gaming act, which allows corporations and hotel chains to own and operate casinos conferences. The Hilton

game casino operator unless biggest strip, and they bill following their own aesthetic, which was a corporate modernism, and it was precisely this style of architecture that Denise got Brown and Robert Voluntary lamented. That's a big irony but, of course this isn't the end of the story, the strip after all, is always reinventing itself responding. What consumers want the big ass, he towers, continued arise until nineteen, eighty nine Steve Weinstock stuck a giant erupting volcano in front of the Mirage hotel. This brings it. The Disneyland era when casinos started to build a crazy, expensive attractions. Treasure which had a big sinking: pirate ship, the big Cinderella, Castle, Excalibur and then came the next phase of the step. Let's call it vacation land, thick, Venice,

canals and gondoliers who seem to you, big Paris, with the fake Eiffel Tower and then in the new millennium. Vegas welcomed a batch of new casinos, designed by big name, prestigious architects. They're trying to guilty millennials by making Vegas look like a cutting edge city. Sixteen dollars, and soon without a doubt, the strip will shape shift again, this is all just to say. The biggest strip is in such a constant state, flux and renewal. It only barely resembles the city that was chronicled in learning from LAS Vegas almost doesn't matter that Vegas has changed, whose modernism is an architectural movement was a short one, as did Scott Brown herself has often said winning. LAS Vegas is not about last days use critic. Alexander Lang again. The point is to use the tools in the really

critical tools like they are writing as critics of the american landscape too. I too your own landscape, your own situation, learning for LAS Vegas has helped architects open their minds, serve judgment and learn from the everyday built environment around them do want to observe the changing ever shifting state of the american landscape. There's still no better placed to see it in the LAS Vegas Strip. Time I go to LAS Vegas. I see something you and, if you, if you just stay. Have the curve, as an architect is good. Every now then too, to visit Leslie He's got Brown went back to Vegas a few more times when. Many of these changes, but it's been a while now I have, been there recently and what I learned from the Disney learn the theme park, error was that there were very talented and doing that. But you know we have always

turned on designing a casino. That was not the point for us, but also no one asked us If China down, we not ask that's called cell grapes. Denise Scott Brown rob inventory. I still together and now they live back in Philadelphia, just a third minute drive away from the Red Rick Library, designed by Frank furnace the full nineteenth century manner risk Building Robert, I regenerated Mason. To the architecture, library and no one would dream of touching it now Eighteen. Eighty six rob prevent and any Scott Brown worked on the master plan for the restoration of the furnace library. Rebuilding that brought their lives and their ideas together

It's Everyone's favoured architecture, game duck or decorated, shat right after this, we often don't think of winter as a time of growth or creation. But if you think about it, it's the perfect time to create your own website, because it cool dob, you're thinking about being productive and now square space can help you do it with where's Bates. You can take your cool ideas, you ve creative content, your services, goods and you can turn them into a beautiful website in just a few clicks. Does it because there is

use templates are created by world class designers, and then you have the ability to customize the look and feel in the different settings for your own needs. For example, my side, roman Mars, dot com I made with square space. The landing page features a close up meeting into a microphone such as mine, my very handsome beard, but if I should ever shave it, I dont have to wait for my web guy to change the photo. I can do it myself and maybe the next vote. I will feature my soulful eyes and where the pages of also picked out some, my favorite episodes of ninety nine percent of visible to share in the audio is convening

We in bed it even on mobile. Try yourself could scarce based outcomes, thus invisible for a free trial, and when you re the launch easy offer code invisible to save ten percent off your first purchase of a website or domain, your local police probably receive a hundred calls a night from broker, alarms and majority the time they have no idea of their false alarms or if they are real, it could be a crime or it could be. You going downstairs for a midnight snack and setting off the motions answer, but simply safe home security is different if there's a break in simply save as real video to tell please whether there is an actual crime and then they have the evidence to back it up, and they can tell them where the intruder is an what they're doing, and that means please dispatch up to three hundred

he percent faster than for other burglar alarms, you can set it up yourself with no tools needed or they can do it for you and has only fifty cents. A day would know contracts visit, simply safety coms. Last nine nine you get free shipping in a sixty day risk free trial. You got another, lose go now and be sure to go to simply say that complex nine nine. So they know that our show is at you that simply saved outcome, slash nine nine. Ninety nine percent of visible is supported by better help online counselling. I'm sure you like me know a lot of people and counselling or are in need of counselling or maybe even counselling yourself and when the biggest challenges is

I am not being able to carve out even an hour a week to deal with challenges like stress sleep, grief and relationships with better help. You can connect privately with a councillor through phone and video horse or even text in Chad. Better help offers licence councillors who specialise in issues including depression or anxiety, get help on your own time. Your own pace and at an affordable rate. Ninety nine percent invisible listeners we'll get ten percent of their first month with discount code. Invisible, that's better help, dot, com, slash invisible! Why not get help better help, dot com, slash invisible. We're back in the studio with every treatment with a little addendum to the learning from LAS Vegas story is one really famous take away from learning from LAS Vegas that we didn't cover

the story, because a kind of eclipses the rest of the book narcotics had to say you had only one finding the dock in the decoration shit. We had ten fifteen or twenty findings, and they have made to haven't rid the stuff well enough, I learned how to use it and one of those people that loves the concept of the duck versus the decorate shed. Just me as a great name, I mean you didn't we can cut this out. If we need to have it, should I give a shot of what I think it is isn't like? What's what's the definite decades? Ok, so these two types of buildings there's a duck which is a building The form that represents the thing that's inside of it and then there's the degree Shadows is essentially a box with a sign on it, more unless you ve got more or less replied he gets. It gets so that that, if that is what it is in theory, but then, as you apply,

as to the real world, if you look around looking for dioxin decorated sheds, it gets kind, a complicated yeah. Every time I teach the deck and decorated Chad. I have to go in re, read it and on probation Khan and re read it stood equally difficult, so designed critic Alexander Lange is going to help us out. A decorated shed is a building. That is a box that could contain anything, and it has a sign out front. That indicates what happens inside so yeah pretty much a decade or so, and you got it you got decorated shed- is pretty much what it sounds like it's a simple, if not to say about but it is a simple and generic building with a sign or a declaration on it, like the Stardust hotel, which things were staying in that way a facade, a mile, long just blazing with neon, and we walked wrong. The back and Bob said the back of this building is far less decorated than water group is ever dreamed of, and we call that the shed so decorated sheds actually.

Comment, if you think of like a big box store if it goes out of business and another business moves in, they just change the sign and it completely functions, and I the interesting thing about learning? LAS Vegas and Scott Brown inventories work. Is that what basically saying is like decorated sheds are not a bad thing. That is one of the main points. From LAS Vegas is trying to prove that signs are really efficient way for building to communicate. So we, getting this model of the shed all over the place, but I was walking down in front of the architecture bird in New haven. Then I looked up- and I said you know it's got no declaration, but the whole thing is a piece of decoration which brings us to the duck: the dogs, So that's the idea of the whole building being a decoration do know I'd call the duck. I don't so its act,

There is a famous building on the side of the road in long island, literally shaped like a duck and its sole duck and sold duck eggs, which, of course, the cells lot of dark, and it doesn't really matter what the shape. Inside those wrote of activity that goes on other, even if the shaped like a duck. There are a lot of buildings shaped like the very thing there selling that's pretty rare there's one outside of where I grew up, which is one of the reasons why I know there's resonated with me: what is it all in island, First stretch of my childhood in Newark, Ohio and outside Newark, Ohio is the starts with an l basket. Company I don't know what it's called. Oh, I know that building they sold baskets and they had a building shaped like a big picnic task is, I think one of the rare like pure forms of DEC

so cool. But then the interesting thing is leg. Frank, gehry buildings can technically be ducks. Frank areas, like Mr Dec because those are statement, buildings that are not decorated per se, like that have ornaments on them, but they are built out as an entire piece of decoration in an of themselves like with Gary as these cuts easy curved metal exteriors, that forced interiors to accommodate it. So it's it's kind of color today, because you would be inclined think what modern buildings are sheds, because their very minimalist but gathers is argument to be made that a lot of modernist architecture is very preoccupied with making ducks, but they called the heroic and original architects people like Paul Rudolf and the brutal S made a building that looked like The indeed all kinds of crazy things to try to express what did up inside but actually often made in a row

that were unusable or balcony. Nobody would ever hang out on, but that's not to say that ducks are bad and some building should be ducks. You knew or some buildings. Have dark. Black parts of them was inside is less important than the outside of the little airport buildings that need something on them to make them show from the air. It would help them do their jobs better, but they better have a big red, checkerboard patents. No claim or fly into them for a while when we were to give a lecture, you should be someone dressed like a duck on the stage with us. Which was nice time of kind of something happening, so I guess you're pretty much right What do you think anything surprise? You are now widened the scope of what a duck is, I can see why, even if you're really small, like Alexander Lang was wastewater about architecture than than mere

anyone I building that you would kind of have to look it up like is maybe the apple campus at Doc. I mean, I think there is a case to be made it's a duck, other any other sort of edged cases that we could talk about. I've heard of that war, Moldova, like other hotels, on the LAS Vegas Strip? You know like some of them really walk. That line am thinking particularly of like New York, New York Hotel, which has us. It looks like this I line of Manhattan, and I can't tell it if that is like a front on about. Of buildings. You know it's hard to tell what is the sign and what is the shape of the buildings, especially when you get to the biggest strap twenty them Vegas. In that mean the best form of examples above yeah learning from one's periods

I looked it up afterwards and it is the longer burger basket. Building that send your go home and it does in the lack of giant picnic basket. It is no longer owned by the long about her company, but the current plans are to preserve it, with its magnificent darkness, ninety nine percent of Israel was pretty sweet by every twelve mixed enter production by Sharif use of music Sean Rio Delaney Laney Hall is the senior editor Kurt coasted is the digital director kitty me It is our senior producer prices. Includes Emmett Fitzgerald turn Massa and me roman Mars. Kosovo, this week to Adam Nathaniel Furman, with fact checking by grand patient? you can find any nine presentable enjoying discussions about the show on Facebook and Twitter me at Roman Mars and the show at ninety nine p. I org run Instagram tumblr and read it to We are part of radio Tokyo from Pure Ex a collective and the best most innovative shows in all upon casting. We are supported by our listeners just like you

you can find any name presented enjoying discussions about the show on Facebook. You can me at Roman Mars and the show at ninety nine p I or run to grant tumblr and read it to what we have in explaining the duck this is the decorated showed that Kurt rode up on our website. It's nothing beyond dot. Org radio, too.