SWARTHMORE

JULIE MARQUARTARCHITECT STEVE IZENOUR ’62ings, Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour inquired into themeaning of the form.They looked at architecture as a culturallanguage. In a sense, their contribution is the revelationthat buildings speak to us. We may not hear what buildingssay, but, on some level, what is said becomes part of a larger,richer cultural conversation that has been going on sincebefore any of us were born, and continues, whether or notwe choose to take part.”Though he has been involved in one way or another witha lot of the firm’s work, the projects on which Izenour hasbeen the lead designer have been what he calls “the funstuff,” such as the Children’s Garden at the New JerseyAquarium in Camden and the spectacular animated lightingof the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, a collaboration with hisfather, lighting and theater designer George Izenour (who, inthe late 1980s, designed Swarthmore’s Pearson-Hall Theater).He has also kept one foot riveted in what he calls “thebasement of the ivory tower,” teaching seminars and architecturalstudios (postgraduate classes involving research,analysis, and design) at Yale, Drexel, and the University ofPennsylvania on such flamboyantly low-brow subjects as theVENTURI, SCOTT BROWN AND ASSOCIATESLEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS, THE 1971 BOOK BY ROBERT VENTURI,DENISE SCOTT BROWN, AND STEVE IZENOUR, BECAME A MANIFESTO FORTHE POSTMODERN DESIGN REVOLUTION. IT ARGUED THAT THE GAUDY,MATERIALISTIC BUILDINGS OF THE VEGAS STRIP WERE VALUABLEREFLECTIONS OF THE COMMERCIAL CULTURE OF THE LATE 20TH CENTURY.Las Vegas casino strip; Levittown housing facades; theAtlantic City and Wildwood, N.J., boardwalks; and, mostrecently, South Jersey suburban sprawl. Studying what isnow called “vernacular” architecture is “considered not quiteserious in most architecture schools,” Izenour says, “but it’stolerated if you don’t stick your neck out too far. A few yearsago, I had to go to bat for a student who did a master’s dissertationon miniature golf courses, but the treatment he gotwas nothing like the antagonism and resistance I had when IS E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 025