Jonathan Ochshorn
To be published as: Jonathan Ochshorn, "Revisiting Decorated Sheds and Ducks for Sustainable Building," 114th ACSA Annual Meeting Proceedings, details to appear. Paper to be presented at the ACSA 114th Annual Meeting, Chicago, March 26–28, 2026. © 2026 ACSA.
Abstract
Decorated sheds, along with ducks, were first theorized by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour in their 1972 book, Learning from Las Vegas. While their argument focused on semiotics and signs, designing buildings as decorated sheds can also be understood as an important strategy for achieving sustainable design goals. For that reason, it is useful to revisit and reformulate the authors' original critique, in order to provide a more nuanced discussion of decoration and distortion. This paper's central claims are advanced in three steps. First, I argue that sustainable buildings increasingly take the form of decorated sheds: energy efficiency and enclosure durability benefit from compact building form; a compact building — one without gratuitous distortion of the enclosure surfaces — is, ipso facto, a shed; such sheds must have continuous control layers, e.g., air barriers and thermal insulation, which create a discontinuity between exterior cladding and building interiors; and cladding, visible to the outside world and disengaged from the building's underlying structure and interior, can easily be configured as a carrier of decoration. These tendencies are increasingly encouraged in contemporary code mandates and can be seen in programs developed by organizations including Net-Zero Energy Homes, Living Buildings, and the Passive House Institute. Second, while ideas about decorated sheds and ducks theorized in Learning from Las Vegas offer important insights into the design and critique of buildings, I argue that a close reading reveals several logical errors and inconsistencies. Third, I develop a more nuanced argument, one that considers the distinction between decorated sheds and ducks in terms of a fluid matrix organized along the axes of decoration and distortion. Reframing the concepts developed by Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour allows these concepts to be better applied to the contemporary use of decorated sheds for sustainable, energy-efficient building.
INTRODUCTION
Sustainable buildings increasingly take the form of decorated sheds, a building type that, along with ducks, was theorized by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour in their classic 1972 book, Learning from Las Vegas.1 To understand how contemporary efforts to create sustainable buildings benefit from a conceptual framework developed more than 50 years ago in the context of semiotics and signs, my argument is advanced in three parts: first, I show that decorated sheds are important for achieving sustainable design goals; second, I critique the arguments in Learning from Las Vegas; and third, I propose a revised definition, based on a more nuanced discussion of decoration and distortion.
SUSTAINABLE BUILDINGS AS DECORATED SHEDS
There are two primary reasons why sustainable buildings increasingly take the form of decorated sheds. The first has to do with energy efficiency and building enclosure durability: these two imperatives are best achieved when building form is compact, i.e., without gratuitous distortion of the enclosure surfaces. In what follows, I take it as a given that compact buildings are, ipso facto, sheds. In examining geometric parameters affecting energy efficiency, forms of distortion — bumps, curves, angled and intersecting planes, three-dimensional articulated patterns, and so on — increase the surface area of enclosure walls and roofs compared with compact, rectilinear forms that enclose the same floor area. "Compact building shape is energy efficient, because compact buildings have less thermal envelope area per unit of conditioned floor area than geometrically complex buildings have."2
In terms of enclosure durability, the proliferation of often complex intersections where disjointed surfaces come together increases the risk of control layer failure. It is true that, in an ideal world, the required continuity of control layers is theoretically possible to achieve with complex and intersecting surfaces, but such perfection is difficult to achieve in the real world where architects, consultants, and the whole array of contractors and subcontractors are pressured to work quickly in order to profit from their tasks. In this context, the proliferation of complex intersections may not be rigorously detailed and specified, necessary research into novel materials or geometries may not be undertaken, and improper or careless implementation of flashing and similar construction details may compromise the required continuity of control layers.3
The second reason why sustainable buildings increasingly take the form of decorated sheds is that a building's control layers — air barrier, thermal insulation, water-resistive barrier, and vapor control layer — create a radical discontinuity within the building, separating the structure and interior spaces from the cladding. This discontinuity, theorized by the Canadian building scientist Neil Hutcheon4 in the early 1960s and generalized as the "perfect wall" by Joseph Lstiburek5 in 2010, was rendered by Ronald Brand6 with a dramatic red line representing the air barrier in 1990, dividing the building into two discrete zones (fig. 1). In such a scheme, cladding is necessarily independent of structure and interior spaces; and as long as the cladding provides protection against impact loads and environmental forces, its specific material and aesthetic qualities are inherently open-ended.
Figure 1. Ronald Brand schematically illustrates the construction of an insulated building starting with (a) structure, (b) air barrier rendered as a red line, (c) insulation (blue tone added by author), and (d) rainscreen/sunscreen or cladding. The required continuity of the control layers cleaves the building into two discrete zones with cladding separated from the building's structure. Redrawn by author based on Brand's figure P-1.
This independence of cladding from the underlying building construction is diametrically opposed to a design ethos that values "honest" construction as theorized, for example, by advocates of so-called brutalist buildings — which are apparently back in vogue.7 For architectural historian Reyner Banham, honest construction was the essence of brutalism; he illustrates this by noting that in the Hunstanton School designed by Alison and Peter Smithson, "Walls that are brick on the outside are brick (the same brick) on the inside."8 However, this ideal abstracts from various negative environmental consequences rooted in brutalism's aesthetic/moral underpinnings, in particular, the difficulty of reconciling an "honest" deployment of material — in which exterior facade materials reinforce the building's structure and interior — with the need to physically separate cladding from structure in order to accommodate air barriers and other control layers. With an explicit and necessary discontinuity between cladding and structure, and with building form constrained, as argued above, by the need to be compact and "shed-like" in order to meet energy-efficiency goals, cladding emerges as the primary tool with which a work of architecture might, as Ruskin wrote in 1849, "[impress] on its form certain characters venerable or beautiful, but otherwise unnecessary."9 In other words, the shed, more often than not, becomes a decorated shed.
This tendency is increasingly encouraged, if not mandated, in building codes10 as well as in sustainability-focused programs promulgated by organizations like Net-Zero Energy Homes, Living Buildings, and the Passive House Institute, since it is difficult to meet their more stringent thermal performance and durability standards in any other way.
Compactness and cladding are two geometric and material parameters that are fundamental to the design of sustainable (energy-efficient) buildings. These elements are foregrounded in this paper because they are key determinants of a building's appearance and performance, but other sustainable principles must not be forgotten. These include, in addition to thermal control (continuous insulation and minimization of thermal bridges) and air control (airtightness and balanced ventilation with heat/ moisture recovery), radiation control (high performance glazing with attention to shading and daylighting) and moisture control (for comfort and condensation avoidance), which are equally relevant.11 The sustainability of a building with excessive and/or inappropriately designed glazing, even if configured within a decorated shed having proper control layer design, will be hopelessly compromised.
CRITIQUE OF DECORATED SHEDS AND DUCKS IN LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS
Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour define ducks as buildings in which "the architectural systems of space, structure, and program are submerged and distorted by an overall symbolic form. This kind of building-becoming-sculpture we call the duck in honor of the duck-shaped drive-in, 'The Long Island Duckling' …" (fig. 2). Decorated sheds, on the other hand, are buildings in which "systems of space and structure are directly at the service of program, and ornament is applied independently of them."12
Figure 2. The "Long Island Duckling" as it appeared in November 2019, © Google 2023.
The authors elaborate further: "The duck is the special building that is a symbol; the decorated shed is the conventional shelter that applies symbols. We maintain that both kinds of architecture are valid — Chartres is a duck (although it is a decorated shed as well), and the Palazzo Farnese is a decorated shed — but we think that the duck is seldom relevant today, although it pervades Modern architecture."13
The claim here is that two things are combined in buildings: symbolic elements on the one hand, and formal-structural-programmatic elements on the other. These "symbolic and representational elements" may be independent of, or separate from — in fact "contradictory to" — what the authors call "form, structure, and program." Yet asserting that symbolism and representation are embodied in particular building elements is problematic. On the one hand, symbolism cannot simply be designed into physical things and, on the other hand, symbolism may well emerge, unexpectedly and in unintended ways, from any particular arrangement of matter, within the mind of any particular human. In other words, what may be represented or symbolized in a building is a subjective and illusive phenomenon, a construction of particular minds at particular moments, and cannot be so confidently assigned to particular building elements as if they themselves "contain" the symbolic or representational content.
Nor is it possible for a symbol or representation to "contradict" the form, structure, or program of a building. If humans find symbolic or representational content in or on a building, then the building, by definition, supports that symbolic reading. The only way that a "contradiction" might manifest itself is if two incompatible symbolic or representation readings emerge from the same building. But such a case is not imagined by Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour. Rather, they allege a contradiction between a single symbolic or representational instance and the building from which this symbolic/representational content emerges. In fact, what they call contradiction is more accurately defined as irony.
The premise in Learning from Las Vegas is that something called "an overall symbolic form" can submerge and distort the "architectural systems of space, structure, and program." While it is possible for such architectural systems to be compromised by design agendas that aim to distort, fragment, or twist building elements into relatively dysfunctional geometries, such formal attitudes, to the extent that they exist, are no more marked by symbolism than any other formal attitude. In other words, it is not the observation that a building may well be "distorted" — and therefore be less functionally efficient in comparison to a normative and "non-distorted" version of the same building program — that is at issue; rather, what is problematic is the presumption that such buildings are uniquely distorted (or "submerged") by virtue of their symbolic content in relation to the building's form. More puzzling still is the example that gives this alleged building type its name — what Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour call the "Long Island Duckling," or just plain "duck." The presumption is that this duck represents a type of geometry that, first, distorts the "architectural systems" of the building and, second, is somehow conceptually distinct from a regular building (a "shed") to which decoration is applied.
Neither of these presumptions is rigorously defended by the authors, and neither of these presumptions is, in fact, defensible. On the first count, no evidence is presented that the "architectural systems" of the duck building are actually distorted or "submerged" in any way. In fact, the duck turns out to be just a wood-frame building with an admittedly elaborate cladding of Portland-cement plaster on wire mesh within which is a useable rectilinear wood-framed space that was designed to "house a retail poultry store."14 The building contains functional and normative "architecture systems of space, structure, and program" that are in no way "distorted" or "submerged" by any symbolic elements. Rather, it is simply a standard building with relatively extravagant (highly articulated) forms of decoration applied. The decorative elements are entirely superficial and in no way "distort" or compromise the underlying space, structure, or program (fig. 3).
Figure 3. The "Long Island Duck," with interior space diagrammatically outlined (left) and Photoshopped into cutaway view from the front (right), is a standard wood-framed building with an extravagant form of applied decoration. Spatial diagram, enhanced sky, and Photoshopped collage by the author, with underlying images of the duck as they appeared in Aug. 2024, © Google 2025 (left) and Nov. 2019, © Google 2023 (right). Note: Animation gif on the left is a schematic elaboration, by the author, of the simpler diagram found in the published ACSA Proceedings.
In fact, the authors of Learning from Las Vegas admit that even the most highly articulated, symbolic, and applied decoration can characterize what they call "decorated sheds." They cite, for example, the Palazzo Farnese, in which a masonry bearing wall is "decorated" with string courses, articulated pediments, and so forth — elements that are functionally independent of the building's structure and program. The same logical relationship between structure and program, on the one hand, and the decorative articulation of the building's external form, on the other hand, can be seen in the Long Island Duckling. In both of these cases, a decorative facade is attached to an underlying normative structure and program. There is no qualitative difference between the "decorated sheds" and the "ducks."
Things get a bit more confusing, however, when Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour characterize Chartres Cathedral as both a "duck" and a "decorated shed." How can a single building's space, structure, and program be both "submerged and distorted" (qua duck) but sill count as a "conventional shelter that applies symbols"? The short answer is that it can't. A "conventional shelter" is, by definition, not distorted — to the extent that it appears distorted, it no longer counts as "conventional." The two terms — "distorted" and "conventional" — are opposed, or contrary, since both cannot be true at the same time (although it is possible that both may be false). What the authors probably have in mind is, in fact, neither a decorated shed nor a duck, but rather a decorated duck.
Yet another question remains: Is Chartres a "distorted" version of some normative structure and program, or is it, rather, a "conventional" instance of a structural form corresponding to a functional occupancy or program? The only way in which the geometry of Chartres Cathedral could be characterized as "distorted" is if some arbitrary geometric framework is assumed to define a "conventional" standard for either all buildings, to which this building deviates, or for only cathedral-types, again to which this building deviates. In the first case, such an assumption is absurd: buildings have various "shapes" and "sizes" that have evolved in various cultures to provide the physical setting for various activities. It is not possible to assign one structural-spatial type that would apply to all construction in such a way that any building different from that arbitrarily-assigned type would be considered deviant, i.e., a "distortion" of the type.
Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour, in any case, never bother to describe what such a type would consist of, so this hypothetical line of argument can safely be set aside. In the second case, one would need to assume that there is a normative structural-spatial type characteristic of cathedrals, or French medieval cathedrals, and that a particular cathedral deviates from that norm. However, Chartres is well within the norms of French cathedral design.
But perhaps the authors had something else in mind in their definition of the "duck" building. After all, they suggest that not only are the "architectural systems of space, structure, and program" distorted in buildings-qua-ducks, but that they are also "submerged by an overall symbolic form." So even if the systems cannot logically be characterized as "distorted," is it possible that they are "submerged"? Unfortunately, this metaphor is so subjective and ambiguous that it is practically useless. Still, it could be argued that a metaphorical "submersion" implies that a building's architectural systems of space and structure are completely covered or obscured by the external formal symbolism in the building. And the example of Chartres Cathedral is certainly a strategic selection to "prove" this point, since such cathedrals have been the subject of much historiographical speculation concerning their symbolic content and meaning in relation to their form.15
Certainly, the use of proportional systems to "fine tune" building dimensions in plan or section — one of the primary pieces of evidence presented by scholars seeking to show the symbolic content of Gothic cathedrals — does not, in this case, distort structural, spatial, or programmatic requirements. Such a distortion would only occur if dimensions within a building were absolutely and precisely determined by structural or programmatic requirements so that the use of arbitrary proportional systems constituted a distortion of a set of dimensions determined independently by structural or programmatic logic. Space, being simply the outcome of such dimensional decisions, cannot be invoked as something with a priori "requirements" in the same way that structure and program can; or, if the very proportional systems used by Gothic builders are understood as fundamental "programmatic" requirements for the cathedrals, then they cannot, by definition, be invoked as evidence that some unbuilt and normative space has thereby been distorted. In the same way, the specificity of the Gothic structure — its precise system of columns, vaults, buttresses, and so forth — is hardly a distortion of some other possible, unbuilt, building geometry. To qualify as a "distortion," one needs an underlying normative condition to which the candidate for distortion can be compared.
But if the Gothic cathedral cannot be said to be distorted by its symbolic form, could it still be "submerged"? In that case, the spatial, structural, and programmatic aspects of the building would need to be covered or obscured by the form qua symbol. Aside from the impossibility of verifying whether such a subjective judgment is true or false, the very scholars who assert the symbolic content of Gothic cathedrals also assert the "honest" expression of Gothic structure and space — i.e., rather than being covered or obscured, structure and space have been refined to the point of perfection and appear precisely as they are.
In the final analysis, the entire notion of separating buildings into these two classes — decorated sheds and ducks — is flawed. Buildings do not contain symbolic elements; rather, symbols are constructed within particular cultures by individual minds, even if influenced by prevailing beliefs. Individuals may find all sorts of physical objects or relations to be symbolic — i.e., to stand for, or represent, something else. A simple wooden structure with a gable roof that serves as a home may come to symbolize any number of things to different people: The form may symbolize "home sweet home," or the vapidness of a suburban lifestyle. None of this is contained in the wood or in the gable, and the meaning of the form is both fluid and subjective.
The fundamental error in Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour's formulation is their attempt to distinguish between, on the one hand, signs that are "applied" to buildings that are otherwise influenced only by space, structure, and program; and, on the other hand, buildings that are somehow bent out of shape in order to directly (i.e., without anything being "applied" to them) register some symbolic message. The former strategy is characterized as "innocent and inexpensive" while the latter is characterized as "cynical and expensive."16 However, arguments relying on innocence vs. cynicism and cheapness vs. expense do not logically cohere.
First, the contrast between innocence and cynicism is itself cynical; the authors' dismissal of "Boston City Hall and its urban complex" as a "profusion of symbolic forms" comes with a recommendation that, even if only rhetorical, cynically suggests housing the bureaucracy in a "conventional loft … perhaps with a blinking light on top saying I AM A MONUMENT."17 Second, the question of whether something is cheap or expensive has nothing to do with the underlying critique that Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour present elsewhere. In fact, they would never seriously make the claim that good architecture is determined by how cheaply it can be made. That this issue is raised at all can only be counted as opportunistic and cynical.
Part of the argument about ducks in Learning from Las Vegas seems to rely on the notion of a basic, or normative, building in contrast to one in which space, structure, and program are "submerged and distorted by an overall symbolic form." The last part of this formula is impossible to interpret because it makes no sense to speak of "symbolic form," for the reasons outlined above. If we eliminate "symbolic form" from the argument, the criterion can be clarified: Ducks then become buildings where the architectural systems of space, structure, and program are distorted, i.e., where the efficiency of the building is sacrificed to some other formal objective. Efficiency is here defined as the socially necessary expenditure of effort, material, or money that is required for any particular building program.18
In other words, it is not that the building form no longer logically derives from, or relates to, its structure, space, or program. In fact, the form of a duck may or may not correspond quite precisely to the building's structure, space, and program. Rather, a better definition of a duck is a building whose form sacrifices efficiency in order to achieve some other objective. It is hardly necessary to itemize the sorts of objectives for which a sacrifice of efficiency is useful. It could be that owners simply want their buildings to be noticed. In fact, it is probable that this is the only reason that ducks are designed and built. There is a temptation to say that it is the architects, rather than owners, who want their buildings to be noticed. But while this is certainly true, such an interest doesn't get anything built unless and until an owner finds such a design useful.
This new definition of a duck voids the distinction between ducks and decorated sheds articulated by Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour, since what they call a decorated shed may — in cases where the decoration itself compromises the efficiency of the building — be better classified as a duck, at least according to this new definition. However, the original duck building, seen in this light, is better classified as a decorated shed, albeit with an unusually elaborate application of decoration.
REFRAMING DECORATION AND DISTORTION
In spite of theoretical problems with Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour's discussion of ducks and decorated sheds, their general strategy of classifying buildings on the basis of decoration and distortion remains useful. As illustrated in Figure 4, a matrix can be defined with one axis measuring deviation from, or distortion of, a normative form (i.e., from the form that appears socially necessary for a given program), and the other axis measuring the degree to which decoration is superimposed on the normative building enclosure (cladding). The individual building diagrams populating the matrix are variations on the ideal wall-roof section drawn by Brand and reproduced in Figure 1d. The most sustainable (energy-efficient and durable) buildings are found in the leftmost column and the least sustainable are in the rightmost column; while the most decorated buildings appear in the top row; the least decorated in the bottom row. For those reasons, Brand's ideal wall-roof section appears in the bottom left cell of the matrix.
Figure 4. Schematic organization of ducks and decorated sheds, drawn as wall-roof sections, reconsidered in terms of the degree of superimposed decoration (vertical axis) and the degree of deviation from a normative form (horizontal axis). The dashed lines schematically represent cladding (rainscreen/sunscreen), whose decoration can consist of anything added, colored, carved, patterned, etc. The blue tone represents continuous exterior insulation and the red line represents a continuous air barrier (typically also serving as a water-resistive barrier and moisture barrier), which is supported on structural wall and roof elements.
Here, decoration is taken fairly literally: as something added, colored, patterned, or carved in or on the building enclosure (cladding), and not simply an "aesthetic" formal arrangement of otherwise normative building enclosure elements. Karsten Harries, for example, has argued that decorated sheds could, in some cases, have "decoration" consisting only of aesthetic, or formal manipulation of otherwise normative building elements. But such a claim dilutes and confuses the otherwise straightforward concept of decoration by conflating it with other aesthetic practices (such as proportioning elevations according to the golden section).19 In other words, we are not discussing the distinction between "architecture" and "building," but only a classification of buildings based on the two building parameters identified by Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour: decoration and distortion. A normative formal scheme without decorative embellishment, as one example, may certainly be further classified in terms of its "architectural" qualities, but such a judgment requires some knowledge of prevailing aesthetic frameworks and the arrogance we associate with connoisseurship; in any case, such a judgment is not relevant to the organizational scheme represented in the matrix.
Of course, there is a gradient between, on the one hand, nondecorative manipulation or "tweaking" of a normative building according to some aesthetic criteria and, on the other hand, literal superimposition of decorative elements; and within that gradient must occur a moment of ambiguity and uncertainty where a particular building cannot be easily classified as decorated or undecorated. One might question, for example, whether patterns of stretcher and header bricks characteristic of various national brick-laying practices are purely functional or decorative. But such questions are easily answered by using the term as it is commonly understood: it's decorative when it appears to be decorative, whether or not it also has a functional basis.
It is possible to populate, somewhat arbitrarily, the conceptual matrix shown in Figure 4 with examples of real buildings. In Figure 5, for example, Irwin Clavan's Stuyvesant Town is classified as being normative in its form and without superimposed decoration, while Zaha Hadid's Jockey Club Innovation Tower is classified as being extremely deviant in its form and also without decoration. The Long Island Duckling shows up as a highly decorated but normative building, since what appears as a deviation from normative form is, in reality, simply an elaborate decorative application over a rectilinear wood-framed building (what Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour would have called a decorated shed). Looked at in this way, the simplistic distinction between "ducks" and "decorated sheds" completely evaporates.
None of the buildings that appear in Figure 5 are particularly sustainable (i.e., energy-efficient by contemporary standards). The point of the matrix is not to show that decorated sheds must be sustainable, but rather that energy-efficient and durable buildings — no matter the degree to which their cladding is elaborated ("decorated") — are most often configured as normative buildings ("sheds") and therefore will most often populate the left most column of the matrix.
Figure 5. Ducks and decorated sheds reconsidered with real buildings. First left to right; then top to bottom: Long Island Duckling, Flanders, New York; Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associate's "The Heights," Brooklyn, NY; Morphosis's 41 Cooper Square, New York City; Palazzo Farnese in Rome; James Stirling's Schwartz Center, Ithaca, NY; Frank Gehry's IAC Building in New York City; Irwin Clavan's Stuyvesant Town, New York City; SHoP's American Copper Buildings, New York City; Zaha Hadid's Jockey Club Innovation Tower, Hong Kong. Matrix devised and assembled by the author; all photos by the author, except for the Long Island Duckling (© Google 2023) and Palazzo Farnese (cropped, by Peter1936F, cc4.0).
CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY
Gratuitous distortion is antithetical to sustainable design, whereas decoration is most often benign. Reframing the theory of decorated sheds and ducks more explicitly in terms of the degree to which a building is decorated and distorted provides a better theoretical tool for conceiving, categorizing, and evaluating buildings in terms of their sustainability.
Sustainable buildings increasingly have compact forms without gratuitous distortion (i.e., are sheds) and are wrapped by continuous control layers protected by types of cladding that often carry the building's expressive load (i.e., are decorated). The revised theory outlined here reframes decorated sheds and ducks in terms of a building's degree of decoration and distortion and clarifies how these parameters inform the discussion of sustainable building.
Endnotes
1 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1972).
2 Passive House Institute US (2021), "Control Layers," Phius Building Assemblies, online here (video, registration required).
3 "No longer consisting of simple building elements, modern facades utilise new materials in increasingly complex systems and these are being assembled in untested combinations with other modern methods of construction (MMC), as well as traditional wall types. Untested, unique and bespoke building interface arrangements have an increased risk of one or more of their performance parameters failing." See Clive Everett, "The complexity of facades and the risks involved," Planning, Building and Construction Today, Dec. 8, 2017, online here.
4 N.B. Hutcheon, "Principles Applied to an Insulated Masonry Wall," Canadian Building Digest, National Research Council Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, CBD-50 (February 1964), online here.
5 Joseph Lstiburek, "BSI-001: The Perfect Wall," Building Science Corporation, July 15, 2010, online here.
6 Ronald Brand, Architectural Details for Insulated Buildings (New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990), 5–6.
7 Jessica Stewart, "Brutalism: What Is It and Why Is It Making a Comeback?" My Modern Met, April 12, 2022, online here.
8 Banham, Reyner, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? (London, The Associated Press, 1966), 19.
9 John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (New York, John Wiley, 1849), 7.
10 The Massachusetts stretch code, for example, "has incorporated additional challenging thermal performance requirements for above-grade vertical building envelopes." See Helen Sanders and Fred Worm, "The Envelope Challenge: Meeting Massachusetts Stretch Code," The Construction Specifier Vol. 78, No. 9 (Sept. 2025), 7.
11 "Passive Building Principles," Phius, online here.
12 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1972), 64.
13 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1972), 64.
14 "Big Duck," Wikipedia, online here (accessed Oct. 8, 2016).
15 See, for example, Otto G. von Simson, "The Gothic Cathedral: Design and Meaning," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Oct., 1952), 6-16, online here.
16 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1972), 109.
17 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1972), 99.
18 The concept of "socially necessary" is borrowed from Marx — who defined the term in relation to labor — since it allows us to be precise about varying and unstable social conditions that otherwise would be impossible to pin down. See Karl Marx, "Results of the Immediate Process of Production" (Resultate), an appendix originally published in 1933 and believed to have been written by Marx between 1863 and 1866 in: Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. One, translated by Ben Fowkes, (New York, Vintage Books, 1977), 1019.
19 Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1997), 4, 6.
First posted January 8, 2026; last updated January 8, 2026