Denise Scott Brown

Denise Scott Brown (née Lakofski; born October 3, 1931) is an American architect, planner, writer, educator, and principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates in Philadelphia.

Born to Jewish parents Simon and Phyllis (Hepker) Lakofski, Denise Lakofski wanted to be an architect from the time she was five years old.

Pursuing this goal, she spent her summers working with architects, and from 1948 to 1952, after attending Kingsmead College, studied in South Africa at the University of the Witwatersrand.

She briefly entered liberal politics, but was frustrated by the lack of acceptance of women in the field.

Lakofski traveled to London in 1952, working for the modernist architect Frederick Gibberd.

She continued her education there, winning admission to the Architectural Association School of Architecture to learn "useful skills in the building of a just South Africa", within an intellectually rich environment which embraced women.

She was joined there by Robert Scott Brown, whom she had met at Witwatersrand in 1954, and graduated with a degree in architecture in 1955.

Denise Lakofski and Robert Scott Brown were married on July 21, 1955.

The couple spent the next three years working and traveling throughout Europe and part of their trip was to Italy with an itinerary devised by their friend, the architectural historian Robin Middleton with whom they had studied in South Africa and met up with again in London.

In 1958, they moved to Philadelphia to study at the University of Pennsylvania's planning department.

The following year, in 1959, Robert died in a car accident.

Scott Brown completed her master's degree in city planning in 1960 and, upon graduation, became a faculty member at the university.

While teaching, she completed a master's degree in architecture.

At a 1960 faculty meeting, she argued against demolishing the university's library, now the Fisher Fine Arts Library, designed by Philadelphia architect Frank Furness.

At the meeting, she met Robert Venturi, a young architect and fellow professor.

The two became collaborators and taught courses together from 1962 to 1964.

Scott Brown left the University of Pennsylvania in 1965.

Becoming a scholar in urban planning, she taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and was then named co-chair of the Urban Design Program at the University of California, Los Angeles.

During her years in the Southwest, Scott Brown became interested in the newer cities of Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

She invited Venturi to visit her classes at UCLA, and in 1966 asked him to visit Las Vegas with her.

The book joined Venturi's previous Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (Museum of Modern Art, 1966) as a rebuke to orthodox modernism and elite architectural tastes, and a pointed acceptance of American sprawl and vernacular architecture.

Scott Brown and Venturi strove for understanding the city in terms of social, economic and cultural perspectives, viewing it as a set of complex systems upon planning.

As part of their design process, the Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates firm studies the trends of an area, marking future expansions or congestions.

These studies influence plans and design makeup.

Such an approach was used for their Berlin Tomorrow Competition, putting the population movement and daily pattern in consideration.

Similarly, the Bryn Mawr College plan took into consideration the landmark of the early campus and the usages of campus space prior to planning.

Scott Brown holds a systematic approach to planning in what is coined as “FFF studios.” In it, form, forces and function determine and help define the urban environment.

For example, the Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates firm studied both the expansion of Dartmouth College campus along with the wilderness surrounding the perimeter of the area.

The fusion of Eastern and Western ideas in the Nikko hotel chain are evident by merging the Western notion of comfort (62 Stanislaus von Moos) with historical kimono patterns with their hidden order.

The architecture applies a post-Las Vegas modern feel while projecting the traditional Japanese shopping street.

Guest rooms are typically made with Western taste, with fabrics, wallpaper, and carpet exclusively from the Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates firm that reflect the scenery outside.

In contrast, the exterior “street” complex reflects Japanese urban and traditional life.

The two were married in Santa Monica, California, on July 23, 1967.

Scott Brown moved back to Philadelphia in 1967 to join Robert Venturi's firm, Venturi and Rauch, and became principal in charge of planning in 1969.

Scott Brown later taught at Yale University, where she developed courses that encouraged architects to study problems in the built environment employing both traditional empirical methods of social science but also media studies and pop culture.

The book published studies of the Las Vegas Strip, undertaken with students in an architectural research studio course which Scott Brown taught with Venturi in 1970 at Yale's School of Architecture and Planning.

The book coined the terms "Duck" and "Decorated Shed" as applied to opposing architectural styles.

Scott Brown has remained a writer on architecture and urban planning.

In 1972, with Venturi and Steven Izenour, Scott Brown wrote Learning From Las Vegas: the Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form.

In 2003 she was a visiting lecturer with Venturi at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design.