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According to Kyle Bergman, the founder and director of the Architecture and Design Film Festival, “Kids who grow up with architects as parents mostly fall into two groups. Some want to become architects and some want to run away, to get as far away from architecture as possible. But then there’s this middle ground, people who are intrigued by what their parents do but want to do their own thing.”
That third group is where the future documentarians come from, Bergman said.
— The New York Times
Christopher Hawthorne writes in preview for this month's Architecture and Design Film Festival in New York, where Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's son Jim will premiere his gleaning biographical treatment Stardust: The Story of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. Nathaniel... View full entry
What struck me when I went back to reread the book is how deliberately it works to collapse the distance, and therefore the distinction, between enthusiasm and skepticism, and ultimately between documentation and critique. Above all, “Learning from Las Vegas” argues for a curious and open-minded anti-utopianism, for understanding cities as they are rather than how planners wish they might be—and then using that knowledge, systematically and patiently won, as the basis for new architecture. — The New Yorker
Yale’s new visiting critic Christopher Hawthorne considers the lasting inspirational qualities and history of Steven Izenour, Denise Scott Brown, and Robert Venturi's seminal 1972 text, whose origins can be traced to a studio the young newlyweds taught in New Haven in the fall of 1968. Hawthrone... View full entry
An influential figure in the development of American postmodernism has been lost after news that former Venturi, Scott Brown partner John Rauch passed away in Philadelphia last week. Rauch was born and raised in the city and educated at Wesleyan University and UPenn before entering the... View full entry
Just as ‘girl, wolf, woods’ signals Little Red Riding Hood, ‘gable, lintel, square cutout, arc’ signals Robert Venturi’s Mother’s House.⠀ — Places Journal
In the second installment of our holiday series on fairy tale architecture, Mary English and Xavier Vendrell of Rural Studio present a playful take on Little Red Riding Hood, inspired by Robert Venturi's Mother's House. "The story has three elements: Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf, and the... View full entry
The idea of the “both-and” suggested a new pluralism, and maybe a new tolerance, in architecture. But the phrase turned out to have its limits. To the extent that Venturi was making an argument in favor of a kind of big-tent populism in architecture, it was a space for new styles instead of new voices, new forms rather than new people. In fact, tucked inside Complexity and Contradiction is an argument for a renewed insularity in the profession [...]. — The Atlantic
Christoper Hawthorne, former LA Times architecture critic and now Design Officer for the City of Los Angeles, dissects Robert Venturi's 1966 book, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (which famously scoffs at the Miessian classical Modernism with the "less is a bore" tagline), and argues... View full entry
From VSBA Architects: Trailblazing architect, and 1991 Pritzker winner, Robert Venturi has passed away on Tuesday at the age of 93. He is survived by his wife and life-long business partner Denise Scott Brown. Their firm Venturi Scott Brown Associates, now VSBA Architects & Planners based in... View full entry
With more and more buildings of the postmodern school regaining media attention—either by entering the realm of heritage protection or by getting contemporary makeovers (essentially taking the Po out of PoMo)—we've now learned about another threatened structure, designed in the late 1970s by... View full entry
Now, decades after the original hardcover edition sold out, the MIT Press is publishing a facsimile edition of the original large-format Cooper-designed edition of Learning from Las Vegas, complete with translucent glassine wrap. This edition also features a spirited preface by Denise Scott Brown, looking back on the creation of the book and explaining her and Robert Venturi’s reservations about the original design. — MIT Press
45 years after its first publication, the groundbreaking book, Learning from Las Vegas, is still read, purchased and studied by architecture and urban planning students, thinkers and practitioners around the world. Last year Archinect spoke with Denise Scott Brown about the Learning from Las... View full entry
After being proposed for addition to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places last year, the iconic Vanna Venturi House has officially joined the list after being voted in by the Philadelphia Historical Commission on November 10th. According to PlanPhilly:"After a nomination first heard last... View full entry
While the buyer’s name and official selling price will be kept anonymous until June, the real estate agency behind the sale, Kurfiss Sotheby’s International Realty, confirmed that the new owner is from the area and apparently wants to preserve the property as it has been maintained thus far. The last known price of the house was $1,500,000 back in March. — Chestnut Hill Local
Previously:No guarantees for historic residential architecture in "real-estate limbo"Golden Years: Saluting joint creativity with Denise Scott Brown, on Archinect Sessions #45The Vanna Venturi House is for sale View full entry
On the happy and historic occasion of Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi being jointly awarded the 2016 AIA Gold Medal, we speak with Brown about whether this could be a watershed moment for architecture, and the long road that she and Robert took to arriving here. We last spoke with Brown... View full entry
Along with her husband and partner-in-design Robert Venturi, it was announced on Twitter that 84-year-old Denise Scott Brown has been awarded the 2016 AIA Gold Medal. Denise Scott Brown, who spoke to Archinect earlier this year, did not win the Pritzker when it was awarded to Robert Venturi back... View full entry
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
Al describes CityCenter as the product of “the Bilbao effect: the notion that buildings designed by celebrity architects bring in tourists, and in particular a higher-end type of visitor”. MGM’s version was to bring in name-brand architects such as Daniel Libeskind, Helmut Jahn and Norman Foster [...].
“It goes against the casino design convention,” Al says, “by having towers that let in natural light and meet the street the way buildings do in other cities” – with retail spaces, not gaming.
— theguardian.com
Modern architecture, despite breaking with the past stylistically, nonetheless maintains this image of the gifted architect as a lone autonomous genius who overcomes gravity and prevails over his client [...]
Rather than an inner activity done in solitude, it has been found that people often discover their thoughts and ideas through interactions with others [...]
The centrality of collaboration in architecture is often overlooked in a culture celebrating and branding “starchitects.”
— Lilith
Referring to recent statistics concerning women in architectural practice and the Denise Scott Brown Pritzker controversy, architect Esther Sperber calls for an overhaul of how we think about creativity and authorship in architecture. Her piece for Lilith, "Revising Our Ideas about... View full entry
