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

Date: August 2022 - December 2022
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.

Colorado Center for Community Development

CU Denver

CU Denver Building

1250 14th Street

740

Denver, CO 80202


303-556-6650

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