Academia While teaching, she completed a master's degree in architecture. At a 1960 faculty meeting, she argued against demolishing the university's library, now the
Fisher Fine Arts Library, designed by
Philadelphia architect
Frank Furness. At the meeting, she met
Robert Venturi, a young architect and fellow professor. The two became collaborators and taught courses together from 1962 to 1964. Scott Brown left the University of Pennsylvania in 1965. Becoming a scholar in
urban planning, she taught at the
University of California, Berkeley, and was then named co-chair of the Urban Design Program at the
University of California, Los Angeles. During her years in the Southwest, Scott Brown became interested in the newer cities of Los Angeles and
Las Vegas. She invited Venturi to visit her classes at
UCLA, and in 1966 asked him to visit
Las Vegas with her. The two were married in
Santa Monica, California, on July 23, 1967. Scott Brown moved back to
Philadelphia in 1967 to join Robert Venturi's firm, Venturi and Rauch, and became principal in charge of planning in 1969. Scott Brown later taught at
Yale University, where she developed courses that encouraged architects to study problems in the built environment employing both traditional empirical methods of social science but also media studies and pop culture. In 2003 she was a visiting lecturer with Venturi at
Harvard University's
Graduate School of Design. In 1972, with Venturi and
Steven Izenour, Scott Brown wrote
Learning From Las Vegas: the Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. The book published studies of the
Las Vegas Strip, undertaken with students in an architectural research studio course which Scott Brown taught with Venturi in 1970 at
Yale's School of Architecture and Planning. The book coined the terms "Duck" and "Decorated Shed" as applied to opposing architectural styles. Scott Brown has remained a writer on architecture and urban planning. The book joined Venturi's previous
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (
Museum of Modern Art, 1966) as a rebuke to orthodox modernism and elite architectural tastes, and a pointed acceptance of American sprawl and
vernacular architecture. Scott Brown and Venturi strove for understanding the city in terms of social, economic and cultural perspectives, viewing it as a set of complex systems upon planning. As part of their design process, the Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates firm studies the trends of an area, marking future expansions or congestions. These studies influence plans and design makeup. Such an approach was used for their Berlin Tomorrow Competition, putting the population movement and daily pattern in consideration. Similarly, the
Bryn Mawr College plan took into consideration the landmark of the early campus and the usages of campus space prior to planning. Scott Brown holds a systematic approach to planning in what is coined as "FFF studios." In it, form, forces and function determine and help define the urban environment. For example, the Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates firm studied both the expansion of Dartmouth College campus along with the wilderness surrounding the perimeter of the area. ==Pritzker Prize controversy==