Vortrag: Valéry Didelon - The Revolution of Learning from...

Lecture of Valéry Didelon, architect, historian and architecture critic, Paris
in the context of the lecture series “We built this City” at the Institute for Art and Architecture Summerterm 2009.

The Revolution of Learning from…

Learning from Las Vegas, the manifesto of Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour has been depicted when it has been published in the late 60’s as the program of “counter-revolution”. Some years latter, it was recognized as a seminal piece of architectural avant-gardism. In between, the book has definitively changed the way peoples look at cities. Today we’re still experimenting its aftermaths, but are we still learning from –

Valéry Didelon (1972) is architect, historian and architecture critic. He teaches at Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture de Nantes, is editor of Criticat a newly founded review and regularly contributes to other architecture journals. He is currently completing a doctoral thesis in art history at the Sorbonne on “The reception of Learning from Las Vegas”.

About the Lecture Series:

WE BUILT THIS CITY…

Architects build Cities, how?
Can we reduce the city as simply a collection of buildings, or do we need to distinguish between architecture and urbanism?
How can we ignore one if we are conceiving the other?
Is the city a system of buildings or is it a complex system, which allows for buildings to be arranged in an orderly or chaotic manner?
Some cities are more desirable to live in than others, why?
Some cities are more expensive t han others, why? | Some cities are easier to get around, why?
Some cities are models for others, why?
Some cities are greener than others, why?
Some cities are dormitories, why?
Some cities are struggling with their glorious past, why?
Some cities are grounds for experiments, why?
Some cities are divided by war, why?
Some cities are automobile cities, why?
Some cities are exploited by politics, why?
Some cities are more public than others, why?
Some cities are…

The lecture series 08/09 will explore the question of urbanity, and what makes the city of the 21st century a ground for another urbanism: We will debate the future possibilities of the metropolis. If Manhattan was the model of a retroactive manifesto, what could be the future of our urban living? And who is to build it?