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Architecture | Research and Creative Work

Learning from Leadville; or Re-contextualizing Venturi, Scott-Brown, & Izenour

Date: August 2022 - December 2022
Overhead view of the model of Learning from Leadville
Student Researchers: Robert Cleary & Jonathan Kaczor Faculty Advisor: Assistant Professor Kevin Hirth

Between 1870-1890, Leadville, Colorado transformed from a small mining town to a bustling metropolitan city of round-the-clock activity that could rival modern-day Las Vegas.

This project attempts to re-contextualize Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown, and Steven Izenour’s “Learning from Las Vegas” to speculate on a future for Leadville that concludes in a world-class entertainment destination.

By examining Leadville’s architectural false fronts and ornamentation, we constructed a reading of the city that lingers between looseness and specificity, networks and grids, and the familiar and unfamiliar. Our proposal offers a new type of monument for Leadville’s infill blocks: a decorated duck that that challenges the lessons of Las Vegas’s architecture of communication and Lynch’s definition of elements of the city.

College of Architecture and Planning

CU Denver

CU Denver Building

1250 14th Street

2000

Denver, CO 80202


303-315-1000

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