Denise Scott Brown

Denise Scott Brown is an architect, planner and urban designer and a theorist, writer and educator whose projects and ideas have influenced designers and thinkers worldwide. Working in collaboration with Robert Venturi for more than fifty years, she has guided the trajectory of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, serving as principal-in-charge of urban planning, urban design and campus planning, and playing leading roles in a number of the firm’s building designs. Scott Brown led planning projects for South Street and Old City in Philadelphia, Miami Beach and Memphis, as well as the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan and Tsinghua University. Among the buildings she shaped are the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London and the Département de la Haute-Garonne provincial capitol building in Toulouse, France.

Born in 1931 in what is now Zambia, Scott Brown grew up in Johannesburg and attended the University of the Witwatersrand before departing South Africa for London, where she received a degree from the Architectural Association, and then the United States, where she received master’s degrees in architecture and planning from the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; and Yale University, among other institutions; and authored noted books including Learning from Las Vegas (1972, with Robert Venturi and Steven Izenour); Urban Concepts (1990); and Having Words (2009).

A recipient of honorary degrees from fourteen institutions, Scott Brown is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and an International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Among the countless prizes she has received is the AIA Gold Medal, which she and Venturi received jointly in 2015, the first time the prize was given to more than one architect.