For what it is, it looks neither forlorn nor pathetic.
Incidentally, does anyone else think evilplatypus's Carlin-word invective make him sound like an adolescent twerp? And, I suppose, Venturi-style architecture as the equivalent of a girl who doesn't "put out" for him, or at least one who's so-called disgusting because she doesn't wax her pubes, etc
Using the word invective doesn't make you any smarter when targeting those disagreeing with you. Someone has to call bullshit around here. Its a cool house but not historically significant beyond the realm architectural philosophers. Im glad someone bought it and moved it but the new owner had every right to tear it down. Its hardly irreplaceable.
(at least) a Philadelphia tradition:
Cedar Grove and contents
Letitia Street House
Hatfield House
Briar Hill library and contents
Period Rooms of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Japanese House Etant donnes
1977.02 antidote:
"If someone in the museum was truly interested in my work they would let me cut open the building. The desire for exhibiting the leftover pieces hopefully will diminish as time goes by. This may be useful for people whose mentality is oriented toward possession. Amazing, the way people steal stones from the Acropolis."
--Gordon Matta-Clark
1993:
Robert Venturi, "Some Agonizing Thoughts about Maintainance and Preservation Concerning Humble Buildings of the Recent Past"
1998:
"Do you know the BASCO sign is now gone?"
"No! Do you know where it is now? We'd like to save it."
1999.10.06
A typed letter signed by Robert Venturi, wherein he laments the demolition of his BASCO 'baby', is currently up for auction at eBay
2000:
"What's the address of the Nurses' Office in Ambler?"
"It's better now if you just look at the pictures."
[found the building and took pictures anyway]
2004.12.17
"Took pictures of soon to be quondam building; visited museum exhibit without the museum building there yet; entered room that moved from inside one Trumbauer building to inside another Trumbauer building. Where do I get my best ideas?"
2005: BEST Building demolished; flower pattern porcelin enamal panels saved, many now in private and museum collections
2009.01/02
Lieb House; another chapter in the architecture of removement
when i visited venturi's office in 1980 near philadelphia in a great working class polish neighborhood (sorry, since i am not from there, i forgot the name of the hood,) they had all kinds of collected signs and panels from their projects on the first storage floor. steven izenour talked to us.
anyway, i hope robert venturi will write about this move in coming days. the move does create interesting conditions that might provoke him to write (or denise scott-brown) a response examining site, project, context, historical relationships, etc...
it is really a complicated move from that point of view.
I know a lot of people that worked with him, and it sounds like he was really interesting to be around. I heard he had a very interesting sense of humor. When I was a student, there was a comepetition in his honor that was interesting.
he was. i think he was an important engine behind all. he was very gracious to all of us and took an important couple of hours from his work to talk us few eager students from los angeles.
my memory of their office is very fond. very generous people who treated information and knowledge as treasures and shared them with excitement.
and, yes, prof. aplomb, there were few best building porcelain panels in the storage room, rejected by the contractor or by the architect, or maybe they were samples...
Feb 2, 09 1:28 pm ·
·
Orhan, I'd say that the Lieb House is now a museum peice. That's how the building's context has now changed. Villa Savoye hasn't moved, but its context has changed as well. It hasn't been a residence in many years, and it too is now a museum peice.
It was asked above what's going on at Guild House. According to "on the boards" of the VSBA website, Guild House is undergoing rehabilitaion. Just in passing, the physical context of Guild House changed drastically within the first decade of the building's existence. Spring Garden Street was much different/dense in the 1960s and bad zoning decisions changed the street into low-rise warehouses. It's kind of difficult to appreciate Guild House 'in context' now.
For what it's worth, I'm becoming much more interested in architectures within the space-time continuum.
Feb 2, 09 2:37 pm ·
·
make that:
For what it's worth, I'm becoming much more interested in architectures within the context of the space-time continuum.
The gothic cathedrals of France used to be in dense villages and they are all but gone.
This house is interesting but let's not make it out to the Villa Savoye or the gothic cathedrals.
Also, the Villa Savoye is a museum. I'd rather have a family live there. I think that changes the house too greatly. Open the house to the public once in a while.
What happened to the BEST stores?
Feb 2, 09 2:50 pm ·
·
make, what exactly is your point? You're not really saying anything different than what I just said.
What may be lingering in the background is the notion that the Lieb House was somehow site-specific, and now, without its site, that building is thus diminished. I'd say the Lieb House was/is much more generic than site-specific. And that is where its historical significance comes from--a thoughtful modern design in the generic idiom.
it is a museum piece as oldenburg's swiss army knife is a museum piece. (more about the piece here)
i find the arguments about which deserves to be a museum piece which doesn't, highly subjective and endless. close to defending your favorite sports team.
ie; judd's pieces are also highly reproducible but that doesn't make them more or less important. you can get a urinal and hang it in a gallery, but it will not make a duchamp piece...
i am not to say art works or important pieces must be saved at all costs or it is sacrilege to give them up. i am more interested in what happens if a condition like this arises and what discussions it generates, both by the original authors and artists and the public at large.
some basic questions must be answered by some would be;
is the house less or more important now that it started a discussion about modernism, history, context etc?
is the demolition of an art work or architecture also the end of the work? (to his credit, ep brought up this question in his earlier post)
can a work of architecture find a new life if it is moved, and what impact that would make for its previous situation?
i am sure there are much more elegant and better questions can be asked and some already asked by previous posters, but in fact the lieb house started these arguments, i find the situation pregnant with many relevant issues. the scale and the nature of the project makes it an ideal discussion detail by detail (literally, also.) that is why i am very interested in venturi's, perhaps forthcoming, article, if any.
"i find the arguments about which deserves to be a museum piece which doesn't, highly subjective and endless. close to defending your favorite sports team."
True enough, Orhan, arguments about whether you do or don't like the house are in fact subjective and and endless, just like sports arguments. What are facts, though is that the house is the second of two key houses designed by a key architect of our time (and that last statement itself is NOT subjective but has been confirmed many times over by the culture and time he lives in); that those two houses and a book pretty much launched his career; and that the house itself has been often referred to and written about (pg. 222 of Charles Jencks' Modern Movements in Architecture is just one example.)
Some of what I've read here about (the lack of) Venturi's and the house's importance is nothing but revisionist history and wishful thinking. There's a lot of famous architects whose works and writings I don't care for, but I would never deny that they are in architectural history and that other architects (and people in general) get something from their work. Having these arguments is stimulating (or something), but I really don't care if some people here think this house is negligable architecture and is not worth saving: all I know is that it has already made a mark and is, to me, interesting architecture.
As far as losing the house forever, well, lots of great buildings have been lost so far and many more will surely be lost in the future...life goes on.
That said, the video of the house being moved is really cool.
It might be the case that in construing explicit contradictions in others, one might be prey to implicit ones. Especially in making that dubious distinction between explicit associations and implicit ones. Another point, the demolition of venturi's architecture denominated by his advocation of the eclecticism of unoriginals, which might be in whole an original endeavour, would not be a loss to the world between theory and buildings. If creatively paradoxical permutations of historical staples was the concern.
The eclecticism of unoriginals in the previous paragraph reveals a paradox that lays between the inane and the insane. This path, this tightrope between Scylla and Charybdis, is the fertile ground upon which all historical staples are construed. Wait... I need another bong hit before I can continue.
"I think it is a massive reach to compare Villa Savoye or Gehry's home to this little thing. "
As far as the Gehry house: no, no, no it is not, no: it's exactly right on.
Both of those house designs were hated and called "ugly" and "piece of crap" by the neighbors - and neighbors will have that kind of reaction but it's a surprise when it comes from those in an architecture forum...but fine. Both were early designs in which the respective architects developed their early ideas, and can be seen as incubators for what came later. And another thing I ain't gonna do in an architecture forum is explain what ideas or notions the houses explored and where they appear in their later architecture...find out for your damn selves. And if you say "yes, but Gehry's led to much better architecture", then I say, "well, that's your opinion".
Both of those house designs were hated and called "ugly" and "piece of crap" by the neighbors - and neighbors will have that kind of reaction but it's a surprise when it comes from those in an architecture forum...but fine. Both were early designs in which the respective architects developed their early ideas, and can be seen as incubators for what came later.
Venturi is a really mediocre Architect. Gehry is better.
I can't really defend this statement beyond it being my opinion, but I think Venturi is a vastly better architect than Gehry, and I'll bet a lot of architects agree with me.
If I had to compare, I'd guess Venturi has had a much greater influence on the work of other architects, where Gehry has brought more attention to architecture to the general public. But Venturi's work is very intellectual, and Gehry's is not. The general public wants things easy, Venturi is not easily palatable to the general public, but is easily rejected.
It's that Ed Ruscha quote, which I have used here on Archinect many times: Bad art makes you go "Wow!...huh?" Good art makes you go "Huh?...wow!" The general public won't go further than "huh?" with Venturi (or for that matter, further than "Wow!" with Gehry).
i guess gehry and venturi are about equal as architects. both have produced a lot of stuff. both can do detailing and bring in clients
and do all the things architects are supposed to do to earn their keep. gehry is more obviously idosyncratic and few have tried to mimic him in the way venturi has been, or mies, le corb, etc. in that respect venturi is probably more influential in a direct way.
gehry however maybe has opened our field right up in a way that is equally, if not more, impt. the bilbao guggenheim and other works changed the public view of what architecture does and can do and that has been very impt for our profession. interestingly he has done all that without needing to appeal to anything but the architecture. that is something significant in itself, what with the extreme archi-babble bullshit of the 80's and 90's. no texts, no apologias, no nothing. just walk into the building and take it in. or not. there is something deeply satisfying about that.
for me the influence of venturi is that he found something interesting that we should copy. with gehry it is more like he found something but the lesson is to go find your own thing to do because what he has got going cannot be copied. that is pretty cool actually cuz instead of spawning imitators he spawns fellow instigators. which is to me much more interesting...
i guess i see venturi as an architect's architect and gehry as a public architect. neither is particularly better and they occupy different niches.
venturi et al have been pretty deliberate in their writing at least, creating arguments and rationales for design that sits very firmly within an intellectual framework. they are better at writing about that framework than most in a vernacular-ish way and it may seem too friendly to be intellectual, but i can't think of any other way to describe it...
to me venturi's architectural work does not reflect that intellectual grounding though, so maybe that is why you can't believe/see it, make?
not that texts and design need to fit together. rem's writing has nothing to do with his design either and that seems to be a non-problem...
the legitimacy of urban form, to start with. The meaning of symbol in architecture. other things. i could probably make a long list, but i don't see the need. it is beside the point.
whether he succeeds in his argument or not is perhaps open to debate but the context of his work is certainly intellectual. why do you think it is not?
Just to serve as a testimonium on Venturi's influence from another continent's -Europe- arch school: they make you read Contradiction and Learning from Las Vegas, study his mother's extremely horrendous house (yes, my opinion exclusively), the antennas and the senior citizens and the ducks and symbols... but I don't remember ever reading or hearing about this little house in class.
I definitely heard a lot about Gehry's chain links and binoculars though. Maybe it was our arch history teacher's bias.
I came out of school thinking all this "legitimacy of urban forms" -using jump's definition- was a big, overintellectualized excuse or alibi for bad design.. and not much more. Contradiction was somehow an interesting read anyway. Maybe it's an American thing exclusively.
i agree with that summary medit. i don't care very much for where the work went - not in theory, and certainly not with the architecture.
but will still give the man (and his partners) his due. their theory at least has without doubt been influential and they raised interesting and important questions. there is insight to be had from it yet.
cuisine isn't the only 'important' kind of food, either, make. mcdonald's is certainly important; it's way of doing business has transformed our entire food culture.
i think influence probably DOES equal importance.
i also think that venturi's writing has had a huge impact on the entire scope of how we do work right now. vsb and collaborators proposed a different way of thinking about what was good - allowing architects to break out of the strict discipline of 'modern' that tom wolfe was able to skewer so effectively because it had already gone a long way to being a closed system. caused a lot of mischief, sure, but also allowed for the diversity of the profession we now simply assume.
i'm in the same camp as several here: i'm not always a fan of vsb's built projects. and it's hard to look at this little house now and understand how radical the thinking behind it was. but it was understood better at the time.
jump said: gehry however maybe has opened our field right up in a way that is equally, if not more, impt. the bilbao guggenheim and other works changed the public view of what architecture does and can do and that has been very impt for our profession. interestingly he has done all that without needing to appeal to anything but the architecture. that is something significant in itself, what with the extreme archi-babble bullshit of the 80's and 90's. no texts, no apologias, no nothing. just walk into the building and take it in. or not. there is something deeply satisfying about that.
for me the influence of venturi is that he found something interesting that we should copy. with gehry it is more like he found something but the lesson is to go find your own thing to do because what he has got going cannot be copied. that is pretty cool actually cuz instead of spawning imitators he spawns fellow instigators. which is to me much more interesting...
And I totally agree with all of this and it's very well-stated. I don't know what this reflects in cultural change across a few decades, but somehow Venturi's work was, in the late 70s, copied very easily and very poorly: architects were getting on the cover of Record etc. for throwing an Ionic column into an office interior yet that was totally unrelated to Venturi's ideas except through the most superficial copying of image. I don't think we ever saw such a direct ripping-off of Gehry's work make any headway into the discopline, except in the schools - when i was in school we all threw chain link into our projects with exactly the same ignorance, and I imagine the schools in the early 90s saw plenty of students with curving metal clad forms on their projects.
I suspect make's comment about cuisine vs. McD's relate somehow to this difference.
Steven's line that Venturi's writing had a huge influence on how we do work now is right on. But maybe, due to time and lousy history classes in schools, we just accept his ideas as status quo now, without realizing, as Steven also said, how radical they once were. If you're under 50 and practicing architecture today, your way of viewing the discipline has been influenced by Venturi, consciously or not, just as it has been influenced by Gehry, and Corbu, and Mies, and others.
There was never any implication that the Lieb House and the Villa Savoye were to be compared in terms of design, importance or influence. Rather, both buildings are examples of modern house that have undergone a change in context via museification.
just so everyone registers that gehry didn't land on earth via bilbao...
there is even an eric moss somewhere in his formative years even though he is a minor in the equation, but represents many as far as the sphere of influence goes!
Venturi's Lieb (No. 9) House to be moved (or demolished)
For what it is, it looks neither forlorn nor pathetic.
Incidentally, does anyone else think evilplatypus's Carlin-word invective make him sound like an adolescent twerp? And, I suppose, Venturi-style architecture as the equivalent of a girl who doesn't "put out" for him, or at least one who's so-called disgusting because she doesn't wax her pubes, etc
Using the word invective doesn't make you any smarter when targeting those disagreeing with you. Someone has to call bullshit around here. Its a cool house but not historically significant beyond the realm architectural philosophers. Im glad someone bought it and moved it but the new owner had every right to tear it down. Its hardly irreplaceable.
with seaward entrance...
the ugly and the ordinary
the extraordinary
both deserve an appropriate response
and then/now there's museification
dossier in brief:
(at least) a Philadelphia tradition:
Cedar Grove and contents
Letitia Street House
Hatfield House
Briar Hill library and contents
Period Rooms of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Japanese House
Etant donnes
1977.02 antidote:
"If someone in the museum was truly interested in my work they would let me cut open the building. The desire for exhibiting the leftover pieces hopefully will diminish as time goes by. This may be useful for people whose mentality is oriented toward possession. Amazing, the way people steal stones from the Acropolis."
--Gordon Matta-Clark
1993:
Robert Venturi, "Some Agonizing Thoughts about Maintainance and Preservation Concerning Humble Buildings of the Recent Past"
1998:
"Do you know the BASCO sign is now gone?"
"No! Do you know where it is now? We'd like to save it."
1999.10.06
A typed letter signed by Robert Venturi, wherein he laments the demolition of his BASCO 'baby', is currently up for auction at eBay
2000:
"What's the address of the Nurses' Office in Ambler?"
"It's better now if you just look at the pictures."
[found the building and took pictures anyway]
2002.11.23
Monument Hystérique
2004.12.17
"Took pictures of soon to be quondam building; visited museum exhibit without the museum building there yet; entered room that moved from inside one Trumbauer building to inside another Trumbauer building. Where do I get my best ideas?"
2005:
BEST Building demolished; flower pattern porcelin enamal panels saved, many now in private and museum collections
2009.01/02
Lieb House; another chapter in the architecture of removement
when i visited venturi's office in 1980 near philadelphia in a great working class polish neighborhood (sorry, since i am not from there, i forgot the name of the hood,) they had all kinds of collected signs and panels from their projects on the first storage floor. steven izenour talked to us.
anyway, i hope robert venturi will write about this move in coming days. the move does create interesting conditions that might provoke him to write (or denise scott-brown) a response examining site, project, context, historical relationships, etc...
it is really a complicated move from that point of view.
Orhan, you talked with Izenour?
I know a lot of people that worked with him, and it sounds like he was really interesting to be around. I heard he had a very interesting sense of humor. When I was a student, there was a comepetition in his honor that was interesting.
he was. i think he was an important engine behind all. he was very gracious to all of us and took an important couple of hours from his work to talk us few eager students from los angeles.
my memory of their office is very fond. very generous people who treated information and knowledge as treasures and shared them with excitement.
and, yes, prof. aplomb, there were few best building porcelain panels in the storage room, rejected by the contractor or by the architect, or maybe they were samples...
Orhan, I'd say that the Lieb House is now a museum peice. That's how the building's context has now changed. Villa Savoye hasn't moved, but its context has changed as well. It hasn't been a residence in many years, and it too is now a museum peice.
It was asked above what's going on at Guild House. According to "on the boards" of the VSBA website, Guild House is undergoing rehabilitaion. Just in passing, the physical context of Guild House changed drastically within the first decade of the building's existence. Spring Garden Street was much different/dense in the 1960s and bad zoning decisions changed the street into low-rise warehouses. It's kind of difficult to appreciate Guild House 'in context' now.
For what it's worth, I'm becoming much more interested in architectures within the space-time continuum.
make that:
For what it's worth, I'm becoming much more interested in architectures within the context of the space-time continuum.
Hey Prof,
The gothic cathedrals of France used to be in dense villages and they are all but gone.
This house is interesting but let's not make it out to the Villa Savoye or the gothic cathedrals.
Also, the Villa Savoye is a museum. I'd rather have a family live there. I think that changes the house too greatly. Open the house to the public once in a while.
What happened to the BEST stores?
make, what exactly is your point? You're not really saying anything different than what I just said.
What may be lingering in the background is the notion that the Lieb House was somehow site-specific, and now, without its site, that building is thus diminished. I'd say the Lieb House was/is much more generic than site-specific. And that is where its historical significance comes from--a thoughtful modern design in the generic idiom.
it is a museum piece as oldenburg's swiss army knife is a museum piece. (more about the piece here)
i find the arguments about which deserves to be a museum piece which doesn't, highly subjective and endless. close to defending your favorite sports team.
ie; judd's pieces are also highly reproducible but that doesn't make them more or less important. you can get a urinal and hang it in a gallery, but it will not make a duchamp piece...
i am not to say art works or important pieces must be saved at all costs or it is sacrilege to give them up. i am more interested in what happens if a condition like this arises and what discussions it generates, both by the original authors and artists and the public at large.
some basic questions must be answered by some would be;
is the house less or more important now that it started a discussion about modernism, history, context etc?
is the demolition of an art work or architecture also the end of the work? (to his credit, ep brought up this question in his earlier post)
can a work of architecture find a new life if it is moved, and what impact that would make for its previous situation?
i am sure there are much more elegant and better questions can be asked and some already asked by previous posters, but in fact the lieb house started these arguments, i find the situation pregnant with many relevant issues. the scale and the nature of the project makes it an ideal discussion detail by detail (literally, also.) that is why i am very interested in venturi's, perhaps forthcoming, article, if any.
Wolfhilde von Schlittenfahrt wanted me to design her a Master Bath that she could occasionally open to the pub[l]ic. I suggested something like this.
"What Sphinx in here?
"i find the arguments about which deserves to be a museum piece which doesn't, highly subjective and endless. close to defending your favorite sports team."
True enough, Orhan, arguments about whether you do or don't like the house are in fact subjective and and endless, just like sports arguments. What are facts, though is that the house is the second of two key houses designed by a key architect of our time (and that last statement itself is NOT subjective but has been confirmed many times over by the culture and time he lives in); that those two houses and a book pretty much launched his career; and that the house itself has been often referred to and written about (pg. 222 of Charles Jencks' Modern Movements in Architecture is just one example.)
Some of what I've read here about (the lack of) Venturi's and the house's importance is nothing but revisionist history and wishful thinking. There's a lot of famous architects whose works and writings I don't care for, but I would never deny that they are in architectural history and that other architects (and people in general) get something from their work. Having these arguments is stimulating (or something), but I really don't care if some people here think this house is negligable architecture and is not worth saving: all I know is that it has already made a mark and is, to me, interesting architecture.
As far as losing the house forever, well, lots of great buildings have been lost so far and many more will surely be lost in the future...life goes on.
That said, the video of the house being moved is really cool.
and this house is "ugly" too.....so what?
Damn I wish that guy took more than a couple photos of the interior
There are some ways to quantify designs, though, mostly by the influence/impact they have.
I think it is a massive reach to compare Villa Savoye or Gehry's home to this little thing.
trace, can you point out exactly the comparison that you see here between the Lieb House and the Villa Savoye that manifests a massive reach?
Really??
You mean you can't point it out?
And to be clear, what comparison of the Lieb House and the Villa Savoye here in this thread manifests a massive reach?
Hey Prof,
Shouldn't you be working?
I am working, because right now my job to ask for clarification of 'massive reach' assertions.
It might be the case that in construing explicit contradictions in others, one might be prey to implicit ones. Especially in making that dubious distinction between explicit associations and implicit ones. Another point, the demolition of venturi's architecture denominated by his advocation of the eclecticism of unoriginals, which might be in whole an original endeavour, would not be a loss to the world between theory and buildings. If creatively paradoxical permutations of historical staples was the concern.
The eclecticism of unoriginals in the previous paragraph reveals a paradox that lays between the inane and the insane. This path, this tightrope between Scylla and Charybdis, is the fertile ground upon which all historical staples are construed. Wait... I need another bong hit before I can continue.
"I think it is a massive reach to compare Villa Savoye or Gehry's home to this little thing. "
At the same time, even Le Corbusier's "little things" would raise a preservationist ruckus if under threat...
"I think it is a massive reach to compare Villa Savoye or Gehry's home to this little thing. "
As far as the Gehry house: no, no, no it is not, no: it's exactly right on.
Both of those house designs were hated and called "ugly" and "piece of crap" by the neighbors - and neighbors will have that kind of reaction but it's a surprise when it comes from those in an architecture forum...but fine. Both were early designs in which the respective architects developed their early ideas, and can be seen as incubators for what came later. And another thing I ain't gonna do in an architecture forum is explain what ideas or notions the houses explored and where they appear in their later architecture...find out for your damn selves. And if you say "yes, but Gehry's led to much better architecture", then I say, "well, that's your opinion".
Venturi is a really mediocre Architect. Gehry is better.
re-read the last line.....
I can't really defend this statement beyond it being my opinion, but I think Venturi is a vastly better architect than Gehry, and I'll bet a lot of architects agree with me.
If I had to compare, I'd guess Venturi has had a much greater influence on the work of other architects, where Gehry has brought more attention to architecture to the general public. But Venturi's work is very intellectual, and Gehry's is not. The general public wants things easy, Venturi is not easily palatable to the general public, but is easily rejected.
It's that Ed Ruscha quote, which I have used here on Archinect many times: Bad art makes you go "Wow!...huh?" Good art makes you go "Huh?...wow!" The general public won't go further than "huh?" with Venturi (or for that matter, further than "Wow!" with Gehry).
nice comments lb.
i guess gehry and venturi are about equal as architects. both have produced a lot of stuff. both can do detailing and bring in clients
and do all the things architects are supposed to do to earn their keep. gehry is more obviously idosyncratic and few have tried to mimic him in the way venturi has been, or mies, le corb, etc. in that respect venturi is probably more influential in a direct way.
gehry however maybe has opened our field right up in a way that is equally, if not more, impt. the bilbao guggenheim and other works changed the public view of what architecture does and can do and that has been very impt for our profession. interestingly he has done all that without needing to appeal to anything but the architecture. that is something significant in itself, what with the extreme archi-babble bullshit of the 80's and 90's. no texts, no apologias, no nothing. just walk into the building and take it in. or not. there is something deeply satisfying about that.
for me the influence of venturi is that he found something interesting that we should copy. with gehry it is more like he found something but the lesson is to go find your own thing to do because what he has got going cannot be copied. that is pretty cool actually cuz instead of spawning imitators he spawns fellow instigators. which is to me much more interesting...
i guess i see venturi as an architect's architect and gehry as a public architect. neither is particularly better and they occupy different niches.
anyway....the moving house is very cool to see.
If you think Venturi is intellectual, then Yogi Berra ia an important philosopher.
C'mon make, spill the beans. When and how Venturi had you?
yogi berra said some pretty interesting stuff.
venturi et al have been pretty deliberate in their writing at least, creating arguments and rationales for design that sits very firmly within an intellectual framework. they are better at writing about that framework than most in a vernacular-ish way and it may seem too friendly to be intellectual, but i can't think of any other way to describe it...
to me venturi's architectural work does not reflect that intellectual grounding though, so maybe that is why you can't believe/see it, make?
not that texts and design need to fit together. rem's writing has nothing to do with his design either and that seems to be a non-problem...
Venturi as an intellectual is a joke. What ideas does he address?
the legitimacy of urban form, to start with. The meaning of symbol in architecture. other things. i could probably make a long list, but i don't see the need. it is beside the point.
whether he succeeds in his argument or not is perhaps open to debate but the context of his work is certainly intellectual. why do you think it is not?
Just to serve as a testimonium on Venturi's influence from another continent's -Europe- arch school: they make you read Contradiction and Learning from Las Vegas, study his mother's extremely horrendous house (yes, my opinion exclusively), the antennas and the senior citizens and the ducks and symbols... but I don't remember ever reading or hearing about this little house in class.
I definitely heard a lot about Gehry's chain links and binoculars though. Maybe it was our arch history teacher's bias.
I came out of school thinking all this "legitimacy of urban forms" -using jump's definition- was a big, overintellectualized excuse or alibi for bad design.. and not much more. Contradiction was somehow an interesting read anyway. Maybe it's an American thing exclusively.
i agree with that summary medit. i don't care very much for where the work went - not in theory, and certainly not with the architecture.
but will still give the man (and his partners) his due. their theory at least has without doubt been influential and they raised interesting and important questions. there is insight to be had from it yet.
or is it too old now?
Influence doesn't equal importance. Culture is about making distinctions.
McDonald's is influential. Does it make it cuisine?
cuisine isn't the only 'important' kind of food, either, make. mcdonald's is certainly important; it's way of doing business has transformed our entire food culture.
i think influence probably DOES equal importance.
i also think that venturi's writing has had a huge impact on the entire scope of how we do work right now. vsb and collaborators proposed a different way of thinking about what was good - allowing architects to break out of the strict discipline of 'modern' that tom wolfe was able to skewer so effectively because it had already gone a long way to being a closed system. caused a lot of mischief, sure, but also allowed for the diversity of the profession we now simply assume.
i'm in the same camp as several here: i'm not always a fan of vsb's built projects. and it's hard to look at this little house now and understand how radical the thinking behind it was. but it was understood better at the time.
jump said: gehry however maybe has opened our field right up in a way that is equally, if not more, impt. the bilbao guggenheim and other works changed the public view of what architecture does and can do and that has been very impt for our profession. interestingly he has done all that without needing to appeal to anything but the architecture. that is something significant in itself, what with the extreme archi-babble bullshit of the 80's and 90's. no texts, no apologias, no nothing. just walk into the building and take it in. or not. there is something deeply satisfying about that.
for me the influence of venturi is that he found something interesting that we should copy. with gehry it is more like he found something but the lesson is to go find your own thing to do because what he has got going cannot be copied. that is pretty cool actually cuz instead of spawning imitators he spawns fellow instigators. which is to me much more interesting...
And I totally agree with all of this and it's very well-stated. I don't know what this reflects in cultural change across a few decades, but somehow Venturi's work was, in the late 70s, copied very easily and very poorly: architects were getting on the cover of Record etc. for throwing an Ionic column into an office interior yet that was totally unrelated to Venturi's ideas except through the most superficial copying of image. I don't think we ever saw such a direct ripping-off of Gehry's work make any headway into the discopline, except in the schools - when i was in school we all threw chain link into our projects with exactly the same ignorance, and I imagine the schools in the early 90s saw plenty of students with curving metal clad forms on their projects.
I suspect make's comment about cuisine vs. McD's relate somehow to this difference.
Steven's line that Venturi's writing had a huge influence on how we do work now is right on. But maybe, due to time and lousy history classes in schools, we just accept his ideas as status quo now, without realizing, as Steven also said, how radical they once were. If you're under 50 and practicing architecture today, your way of viewing the discipline has been influenced by Venturi, consciously or not, just as it has been influenced by Gehry, and Corbu, and Mies, and others.
the important is seldom influential; while the reverse is always true.
the important is seldom influential; while the reverse is always true.
ahh... aphorisms, they always work.
fuckin' a, grasshopper.
There was never any implication that the Lieb House and the Villa Savoye were to be compared in terms of design, importance or influence. Rather, both buildings are examples of modern house that have undergone a change in context via museification.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1MENfRLEv-M/SYcbvcSmtmI/AAAAAAAAAuQ/5rIBKHVVgW4/s1600-h/lieb+house+by+suwa.jpg
nice angle
And now going on to another dossier--the influence (back in the day) of Venturi et al on Gehry.
just so everyone registers that gehry didn't land on earth via bilbao...
there is even an eric moss somewhere in his formative years even though he is a minor in the equation, but represents many as far as the sphere of influence goes!
more early gehry
Venturi's Fire Station Number 4 (1966)
it was very important for me to see this building in 1980 as a student.
years later when i did this, i thought of that snapshot image of the fire station i saw as a student... even at this level of distant relationship...
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.