ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the primary focus of the book. It points out the methodological constants and shared critical strategies in the history of theoretical discourse on Western architecture. It offers a close reading of Venturi and Scott Brown’s critique of modernity in Learning from Las Vegas. It compares the critical strategies of that critique to Le Corbusier’s critique of 19th-century eclecticism from one end to the Post-Critical critique of Post-Modernism on the other. Pointing out the overwhelming similarities of these critiques, centered as they are on the question of representation in architecture, this chapter concludes by detailing the questions that the book sets out to address and the approach it takes to that end.
