Denise Scott Brown: New Questions

26 September 2011 6pm

  • Denise Scott Brown: New Questions
  • Denise Scott Brown: New Questions
  • Denise Scott Brown: New Questions
  • Denise Scott Brown: New Questions

New Questions presented a one-off opportunity for our members to engage in an intimate seminar with Denise Scott Brown, one of the 20th Century’s most influential architectural thinkers and practitioners. A personal tour through Scott Brown’s own position was followed by a lively and provocative debate in the close quarters of the AF’s Project Space, to which all present were be invited to participate.

Selected students and tutors from London’s leading architecture schools, Sir Terry Farrell (a former student of Scott Brown), and a small audience of AF Members took part in a wide ranging session of argy bargy. The self-titled ‘grandmother of architecture’ set a challenge for architects to engage with the world that surrounds them and to ask what they can learn from social scientists, urban economists, and even planners.

At a time when Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi’s ideas are being revisited through the V&A’s major exhibition ‘Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–1990’, the conversation initiated new questions about the continuing relevance of their approach, explored how a new generation are seeing beyond the neon to take up the social agenda behind their work, and investigated how Scott Brown’s ability to look at the all too familiar with the inquiring eye of a stranger could be important for London today.

Open to AF Members only, with prior registration, on a first come first served basis.

Please RSVP to members@architecturefoundation.org.uk by Friday 23 September to reserve your place. Latecomers may not be admitted.

With thanks to Sir Terry Farrell and Finn Williams