Architecture’s postmodern turn began with celebrating Las Vegas’s commercial signs

Evidence

In 1972 Robert Venturi and his associates Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour published the architectural manifesto of the decade, Learning from Las Vegas. … Here, they argued, was to be found a spectacular renewal of the historic association of architecture with painting, graphics and sculpture — an exuberant primacy of symbol over space — that Modernism had to its cost foresworn. It was time to return to Ruskin’s dictum that architecture was the decoration of construction. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 58

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Pairs with ‘Grafting & Growth’ spirit of infrastructure, but more directly this gives the visual/urban counterpoint to ‘on Sacrifice’ fascination with how cultural forms crystallize; strongest link is to grafting-adjacent ideas of symbol over space as an infrastructure-of-meaning claim.
• XREF: Venturi’s ‘primacy of symbol over space’ and ‘decoration of construction’ anticipate Jameson’s later reading of postmodern architecture as pastiche and the Bonaventure Hotel analysis. — connects to: Postmodern architecture of spectacle displaced austere modernism for urban redevelopment. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 563; Semiotics and postmodern architecture were mutually justified by their shared populist, sign-emitting character — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 906; Sixties counterculture found itself at home in Vegas because postmodernity emerged seamlessly from it — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 355

Broader Connections

• Semiotics and postmodern architecture were mutually justified by their shared populist, sign-emitting character #corroborates (0.88) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 906
• Postmodern architecture of spectacle displaced austere modernism for urban redevelopment. #expands (0.78) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 563