In the wake of Robert Venturi's passing at the age of 93 this past Tuesday, fellow practitioners, writers, educators, and dedicated followers around the globe are remembering the renowned architect with heavy hearts. Whether through his influential book “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture”, the trailblazing designs he created with Denise Scott Brown in VSBA Architects & Planners, or having the chance to meet him in person, people have been sharing on the Internet how Venturi shaped their own architectural perspectives and practice.
Talking to Archinect on the phone, Frank Gehry told us: "He was a staggering figure in my life. We disagreed on almost everything in architecture, but I just loved Bob and Denise. We were on many podiums together, and he criticized everything I was doing. I certainly considered him one of the more important people in architecture. I'm devastated that he's gone." Asking him what he saw as some of Venturi's most important contributions to architecture, Gehry said: "He opened architecture up to the world of pop culture; opening it to the art world, the commercial world. Learning from Las Vegas was part of this endeavor."
As part of our tribute to Venturi and his work, Archinect rounded up a collection of reactions, obituaries, and our past coverage that you can read below.
Steven Song, principal of LA-based design firm SCAAA, close friend of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, and author of several Archinect features about the impact of their architectural theory (see link list below), told us: “Many years ago, Bob and Denise received a letter from a lost 1st year architecture student. They took me under their wings in their home and office and nurtured until I fledged. We spent many hours talking about life and architecture — often as one and the same — and in a desperate attempt to stay in the intellectual conversation, I shared with him what I had learned from my Zen buddhist mother. I remember Bob found this saying of a late Zen master particularly interesting: ‘Do not worry. The mountains will always be green again, and the rivers will always flow with water. It is not a road that comes and goes, appears and disappears at random. It will always be there as it changes.’ The world and I will continue to learn from him through his lessons that will outlive all of our lives combined.”
Frederick Steiner, dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design in Venturi’s hometown of Philadelphia, shared with us: “Bob Venturi changed fundamentally the course of architecture theory and practice. Like the city of Rome that he loved so much, Bob’s work captures that sense of the eternal that spurs creativity and imagination for generations to come.”
Mónica Ponce de León, dean of the Princeton University School of Architecture, an institution which Venturi designed several buildings for, said in a statement on the school’s website: “We are greatly saddened by the news of Robert Venturi’s passing. He was an extraordinary theorist, teacher, and practitioner whose impact on the field of architecture cannot be understated. An imaginative innovator and creative thinker, he influenced the careers of countless architects and made a true mark on the built environment. Along with his partner, Denise Scott Brown, they brought architecture into a new era, one with historical context, humor, and humanity.”
Many architects, critics, historians and general admirers took to twitter yesterday to express their sadness over the passing of the pioneering architect and theorist:
I am heartbroken to learn of the death of Robert Venturi. Writing about him and Denise Scott Brown was the beginning of my career as an architecture critic: Less Is More‐mies van der Rohe Less Is a Bore--Robert Venturi https://t.co/52VtASVoK8
— Paul Goldberger (@paulgoldberger) September 19, 2018
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s house. RIP Bob. pic.twitter.com/Rj53yUXH70
— edwin heathcote (@edwinheathcote) September 19, 2018
When Robert Venturi called me a degenerate and a pervert. https://t.co/L4aQi5Q6qO Thanks for everything Bob. Will do my best to keep up the bad work just for you ...
— Sam Jacob (@_SamJacob) September 19, 2018
As someone who grew up in Anywhere, USA, far away from any great works of architecture, Robert Venturi's elevation of quotidian buildings made me feel seen, made me feel like the places I had observed (and my appreciation for them) were valid and meaningful.
— katewagner.bsky.social (@mcmansionhell) September 19, 2018
It is almost incomprehensible, but we have lost Robert Venturi, a thinker, teacher, architect and writer who played a vital role in massively expanding the notion of what academic architecture was, and could be... pic.twitter.com/ntBf8gqMXt
— Adam Nathaniel Furman (@Furmadamadam) September 19, 2018
An architect like Robert Venturi could only have emerged from a city like Philadelphia. My obit: https://t.co/Mcy0oAtuFn pic.twitter.com/mJbEtLHxX7
— Inga Saffron (@IngaSaffron) September 20, 2018
Always and forever, one of my favorite architectural things. RIP Robert Venturi. pic.twitter.com/PT24znsjGl
— Alexandra Lange (@LangeAlexandra) September 19, 2018
Part of what make Venturi and Scott Brown so inspired is their legacy of collaboration and appreciation for the everyday, in which they recognized beauty, innovation and the humanity of architecture.
— Michael Kimmelman (@kimmelman) September 19, 2018
I met Robert Venturi when I was 18 and, well, it probably changed the course of my life https://t.co/LIbZ6JZDRi
— Olly Wainwright (@ollywainwright) September 20, 2018
Over the years, the work of Robert Venturi and partner Denise Scott Brown has been featured prominently on our site:
Golden Years: Saluting joint creativity with Denise Scott Brown, on Archinect Sessions #45
Learning from 'Learning from Las Vegas' with Denise Scott Brown, Part I: The Foundation
Learning from 'Learning from Las Vegas' with Denise Scott Brown, Part 2: Pedagogy
Learning from 'Learning from Las Vegas': in conversation with Denise Scott Brown, Part 3: Research
Their architectural legacy has even inspired some rethinking of our own:
Shifting Paradigms Part 1 | Renovating the Decorated Shed
Shifting Paradigms Part 2 | Renovating the Decorated Shed
Redesigning Las Vegas: Entertainment Architecture for the Experience Economy
1 Comment
food for thought
less or
more
By Architect Dr. Ami Ran - Editor in Chief -
Architecture 0f Israel Quarterly
One of the symptoms currently shaping the world of architecture that feeds mainly on generic content - is the loss of personal identity. The most concrete example of this phenomenon is the malignant use of Emoji that is rapidly replacing speaking, writing and planning.
Admittedly, global languages have some merit, otherwise they wouldn’t have been invented - musical notes that in the 11th century replaced biblical musical signs, Esperanto, developed in 1887 by Eliezer Ludwig Zamenhof, a Jewish (Polish) physician who thought of a way to connect hearts, Morse code invented prior to the telegram and, more recently, the Emoji, extreme- short-cuts to express joy, sadness, or disappointment by attaching an orange face that manages to communicate between a Chinese and a Sudanese at the speed of light. The problem is that sadness, joy or disappointment are always personal and overlooking this might eliminate the differences between race, gender, culture or place.
Giving a personal touch to global design language is not new. The concept was developed in the 19th century in order to give mass production local meaning in the Deutscher Werkbund - the German Association of Craftsmen that served as a basis for modernism at the beginning of the 20th century. The founding architect was Paul Bruno – and his talented student, Mies van der Rohe who falsely commandeered the copyright for the cliché ‘less is more’.
One assumes that as a world famous architect who replaced Gropius as Bauhaus director, Mies was aware of this line by British poet, Robert Browning, in his dramatic monologue “Andrea del Sarto” - a Florentine painter whose work was characterized by subjects emphasized by colors, against a gray background.
One way or another, the phrase became the most renowned symbol of modernist architecture - tired of the superfluous ornamentation of the classicism that preceded it.
In this context, it is worth noting that neither Mies’s most cited example - Pressworth House of 1957 and Phillip Johnson’s Glass House of 1949, exemplify any architectural thinking worthy of imitation: Their climatic functioning is faulty, as their curtains don’t prevent the summer heat from penetrating the building, and when they are open in the winter, do not allow residents’ privacy.
However, the modernist concept doesn’t refer to any particular formal style, but rather to an abstract design code, open to endless concrete interpretations. And, since the function of a building is not determined in advance, neither is the form.
Thus, the planning code correlating content and form has given architects open creative freedom, as long as they can (ostensibly) assign every detail in the building a functional justification, whether symbolic, representational or ornamental.
Evidence of this is Le Corbusier’s “open hand”, which appears in many of his buildings as an obvious ornamental element representing the architect rather than any function of the building.
Moreover, Le Corbusier’s buildings have never been perceived as representative of the phrase ‘less is more’, especially due to the fact that the “less” principle underlying his buildings is by no means simple, and certainly not less (see AI#113). Ironically, his most quoted contributions to the modernist campaign are his anti-social declarations, “a house is a machine for living in, as mentioned in his book, published in 1923, “Towards New Architecture”.
By the way, this is true about all the modernist branches - the De Stijl or Neoplasticism in Holland, the “Natural” theme developed by Alvar Aalto in Finland, and the organic architecture developed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the USA. Each of them had a completely different outlook on architecture, and not at all minimalist.
Cardinal to them all is a conciseness that uses “word” economically, while enabling varying interpretations, very much like poetry where one says less, but means much more.
And about style: The history of art is consistently based on two alternating trends appearing in varying shades – one is realistic and less decorative, the second - romantic and overly ornamented.
In this context, the rotating transition from the ornamental classical approach to minimalist modernism, and from there - back to content loaded Post-modernism, was natural, regardless of the circumstances.
The transition from modernist style to the formal negation of the minimalist concept (wrongly) came from two directions: On one hand, users who thought that simplicity was too boring, and on the other hand, architects who were looking for ways of expression beyond the artificial subjugation to function.
Prominent among these was modernist Robert Venturi, who coined the cynical phrase, ‘less is a bore’, arguing that the modernist “truth” was no longer relevant, since human beings (architects as well) needed ornamentation for self-expression.
Venturi, who worked in Louis Kahan’s office (who was born with the non-minimalist name of Louis Isadore Kahn), demonstrated the concept on his own house in Philadelphia, where the balanced, symmetrical facade was violated by deflecting the chimney from the center.
With the end of the post-modernist cacophony that legitimized meaningless affectation, I personally suggest replacing the message with something more moderate, like ‘more is less’, and the well-known Hebrew phrase “anything added, lessens”, is preferable to ‘anything added, is perfect’, because it really isn’t.
In an era when aesthetic boredom stems from over-design and computerized tricks that no longer do it for us, the optimal solution seems to be a comfortable harmony between minimum and maximum – something that enables a reasonable measure of personal expression - yet not too clever, nor overly decorated, and certainly not boring.
The cliché “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” (not my own invention), first appeared in the 1916 silent film, Molly Bawn. The script was adapted from the book by Irish writer Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, though like anything intelligent, the concept was already known in Greece in the 4th century BC; Shakespeare used it in several plays in the 16th century, and ever since it has been quoted in innumerable essays dealing with the notion of aesthetics.
The heroine of the book - Molly Bawn, was a “frivolous, annoying” Irish girl who rebelled against the harsh social/religious conventions.
Hungerford’s book is mentioned by James Joyce in Ulysses in 1922, that ended in a discussion about stream of consciousness. Joyce himself is quoted as saying about his book: “I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant and that’s the only way of ensuring one’s immortality”.
The concepts of conciseness and involvement underlying the above relate to the term “meaning”. 19th century German philosopher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, argued that understanding the term “meaning” is actually the reconstruction of the writer’s intention.
But, today, any knowledgeable scholar knows that the cliché “what did the poet mean” pales in comparison to the question – “what do readers understand”, particularly in terms of architecture that strives for a long life.
While the first question is suitable for researchers, what actually determines the life of an artwork is the number of layers it manages to reproduce in its lifetime through readers' or observers' interpretations long after the work is completed. So it is with literature, music, art and certainly architecture, which constitutes a durable arena for innumerable events, the most important of which are created randomly without any connection to the artist’s intention.
This perception utterly negates Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher’s argument, whereby understanding the meaning is a reconstruction of the artist’s intention, when the invisible ‘less’ becomes ‘more’ and more in time.
In this context, space organization is far more significant than the look of the building. This is where the involvement happens through discovering the hidden, which is, according to the Sages – the motivating component of life, and the best way to involve the user in the act of creation.
The best example I know of this approach is poetic writing (as opposed to prose writing), where the space between the words requires the closing of gaps, which delays the flow of thought, thereby requiring the reader to engage in personal involvement, reminding him of similar situations (referred to extensively in the article: Where exactly lies the poetic dimension of architecture - AI #68).
History of architecture is loaded with endless ways to illustrate the fact that the more you invest in thinking, the less you are required to invest in the building process.
We have chosen to illustrate (most of) the article with works by Wespi de Meuron Romero Architects, in which - no matter the style - less intervention is an outcome of more architectural thought.
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