Today it houses one of London’s best permanent collection displays, but the 1991 Sainsbury Wing extension to the National Gallery in London was almost scuppered when Prince Charles and the other trustees opposed the architect of the new building, Robert Venturi.
The row was over a false Corinthian column that the US architect wanted as a decorative feature on the Trafalgar Square façade of the new extension.
— The Art Newspaper
14 Comments
I would loooooove to have Bridget Riley explain why a column must be a support.
Looks like pilasters to me, not columns.
its a half column.
Oh the swelling and diminution of the column's shaft . . . nothing more satisfying!
My how proudly it stands forth!
Shame its not lower, so the passersby could grace it with light, feathery touches.
A column actually supports something, a pilaster is decorative. Venturi's work should be erased from history.
I can't stand this kind of building. A one liner that never shut's up. Why got to all the trouble and expense of that cladding and not compose something more than a polemic? Venturi seems to have been a necessary antidote to the anonymity and sterility of modernism, but it's time to recognize he just wasn't a good architect.
Venturi seems to have been a necessary antidote to the anonymity and sterility of modernism, but it's time to recognize he just wasn't a good architect.
I agree with that!
I checked Bob the Builder's Quattro Libri, and according to Bob the Builder, you're correct Miles.
you can dislike the work of venturi et al, but i dont really think you can claim they arent good architects.
One of the contextualizing writing about the Sainsbury Wing was in this Archinect feature by Steven Song "Architecture in the Givenness - Toward the Difficult Whole Again: Part 1"
"you can dislike the work of Venturi et al, but i don't really think you can claim they aren't good architects."
This is the kind of complexity and contradiction in architecture that Venturi would have appreciated. Like my Pratt professor used to say, 'I love that which I don't understand.'
What am I missing? How would a false column ruin Trafalgar Square? When Charles gets kinged will all the unstructural columns get taken out?
That column is a lie!!!
It's holding up Nelson.
Oh Snap!
18x32 just dropped free play of signs and signifiers!
its on, bitches!
(See, this is why grammar is important cuz like its on bitches means like some total other shit).
Prince Charles' carbuncle comments were about the previous design not Venturis.
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