Op Arch

Abstract

JAE's White Issue is long overdue. The notion that architectural experimentation requires a rigorous feedback between design and research has been at play in design pedagogy since at least the 1960s and 1970s, which included the seminal research studio by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas ¹; the rise of operations research and systems engineering; the urban networks research of Shadrach Woods, the Smithsons, Constantinos Doxiadis, or Kenzo Tange; and the structure and materials research of Buckminster Fuller, Frei Otto, and Robert Le Ricolais, to name but a few. Concerns about the deterministic instrumentalism of systems thinking led to a new wave of humanism and composition, seen especially in the postmodernist uses of both historical examples and junkspace vernaculars as a Disneyesque brand image. The work of Venturi and Scott Brown, ironically, was to lead the way on the heels of the “duck vs. decorated shed” conclusions of Learning from Las Vegas.² Unlike most postmodernists, however, Venturi and Scott Brown did not abandon research, and their understanding of the relationships between pop culture, branding, and marketing techniques remains sophisticated and timely.