On the University of Pennsylvania Campus, the Library of Fine Arts is a richly ornate and eclectic structure belonging to the School of Design. Completed in 1890, it is currently designated a National Historic Landmark. But in the late 1950s and early 60s, there was serious discussion of tearing it down altogether. Denise Scott Brown, then a new faculty member at Penn, was very much against the demolition proposal.
In the early 60s, a lot of architects were very into tearing down old frilly buildings, and replacing them new, sleek modernist buildings. The dean wanted the historic library gone — “it was what a Modernist would do, you see,” explains Denise.
Denise herself wasn’t against all of Modernism — she liked the look of sleek glass and steel buildings themselves. The thing is, she was getting tired of paternalistic Modernist ideology. Many Modernists thought they knew better than other people did how a building (or city) should function. They were building for people without asking people what they wanted. Still, Denise saw value in some of aspects of the Modern Movement. “Yes, I am a Postmodernist, but,” she clarifies, “also a Modernist, an admirer of the principles of early Modernism of the 20s and 30s and of their ‘New Objectivity.'” Although she rejects the “Modernism of the 50s and 60s, and also today’s Neomodernism,” she sees “Postmodernism as updating Early Modern principles for today.” [...]
To this day, architects tend to turn their noses up at Las Vegas, or simply dismiss it as irrelevant to serious design theory. “From an architecture perspective, its a city that’s known for neon, a city known for kitsch,” explains Stefan Al, a practicing architect and author of the book The Strip: Las Vegas and the architecture of the American Dream. “It’s exactly the opposite of what conventionally trained architects would like.”
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