Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour published their initial research on the architecture of the Las Vegas strip in 1972 as A Significance for A&P Parking Lots, or Learning from Las Vegas (LFLV). Part of a larger break with the politics and aesthetics of modern architecture, the book has been an important text for thinking about our experience of cities. Now that Nevada is associated with the largest housing market collapse in the country and among the highest unemployment rates, does reading this book take on a different meaning today? How do we reconstruct the relationships between art, society, the economy, and cities?

I AM A MONUMENT, a mini-book club, met twice at the Institute of Contemporary Art to discuss the book and its possible re-readings. Conceived as an overlapping of Philadelphia’s many book clubs and autodidacts, it hoped to spark a discussion on cities, systems, and art. The club was organized by Daniel Denvir (City Paper) and Becket Flannery, members of ongoing book clubs dedicated to urban studies and art theory.