Scott Brown was born in Nkana, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), studied architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand and the Architectural Association in London, then planning at Penn under Louis Kahn, where she met Robert Venturi. She joined his Philadelphia practice as a design partner in the late 1960s and became an equal creative force in its urban and institutional work, from the Las Vegas strip surveys behind Learning from Las Vegas (1972, with Venturi and Steven Izenour) to the larger public commissions built as Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, including the Sainsbury Wing of London's National Gallery and the Seattle Art Museum. When the 1991 Pritzker Prize went to Venturi alone, Scott Brown declined to attend rather than accept recognition that excluded her share of the work; a 2013 student petition asking the jury to add her name retroactively was declined.
