Nomination for the “Architecture Books” section

Learning from Las Vegas

Authors: Magda Teodorescu – coordonator traducere, arch. Toader Popescu – revizuire și control științific, arch. Miruna Stroe – revizuire și control științific, grafică și paginare, arch. Tudor Patapievici – asistent traducere
Collaborators: Postfață: arh. Mihaela Criticos
Grafică ilustrații cu text: arh. Irina Tulbure

Authors’ Comment

Learning from Las Vegas will always stay as a milestone for both architectural theory and urbanism as well as for architectural history; and this is due first and foremost to its authors’ steady appeal, which was extremely meaningful for the historical context surrounding its publication, to significant architecture and convivial relationships between humans and their built environment.
Apart from its uncountable pictures, diagrams and tables, the text of the book is concise though astonishingly dense and complex; it comes as both a robust critique against the dried-up and detached ‘academic’ Modernism, frozen in its own dogmas, and advocates the redefinition of architecture as language, in parallel to the way in which we could re-think architectural symbolism and ornament. It also stands out as a model and method of urban morphological analysis, and why not, as a tentative treatise on architecture and urban theory for the late 20th century.
The Romanian version of the book, which is part of a series of translations of essential texts of architectural history and theory, stands for a long-needed cultural gesture which will enhance the knowledge and dissemination in larger circles and help reconsider a groundbreaking theoretical volume.

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