Iconography and Electronics upon a Generic Architecture: A View from the Drafting Room

by Robert Venturi

Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture and Learning from Las Vegas (the latter coauthored with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour) are among the most influential books by any architect of our era -- the one celebrating complexity in architecture, the other the uses of symbolism in commercial and vernacular architecture and signage. This new collection of writings in a variety of genres argues for a generic architecture defined by iconography and electronics, an architecture whose elemental qualities become shelter and symbol.The voice is personal -- eloquent in expounding on the unglamorous side of practice; sometimes vituperative and corrective in addressing clients, theoreticians, and critics; often amusing and humorous in looking back on past projects and opportunities; instructive in describing early influences and tastes; and reflective in assessing his own impact on the profession.The essays include Venturi's 1950 M.F.A. thesis, published here for the first time -- a work that foreshadows many of the themes that were later to make him a controversial and ground-breaking architect and writer -- and a series of vintage Venturi aphorisms.

Genres: Architecture

390 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Robert Charles Venturi, Jr. is an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major architectural figures in the twentieth century. Together with his wife and partner, Denise Scott Brown, he helped to shape the way that architects, planners and students experience and think about architecture and the American built environment. Their buildings, planning, theoretical writings and teaching have contributed to the expansion of discourse about architecture. Venturi was awarded the Pritzker Prize in Architecture in 1991; the prize was awarded to him alone despite a request to include his equal partner Denise Scott Brown. As of 2013 a group of women architects is attempting to get her name added retroactively to the prize.[1][2] He is also known for coining the maxim "Less is a bore" a postmodern antidote to Mies van der Rohe's famous modernist dictum "Less is more". Venturi lives in Philadelphia with Denise Scott Brown.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A friend of mine who was working for VSBA said to me, “Dude – you should read this book. Bob’s embittered and screams about how it was he that invented the four-square picture window!” Interested, I promptly went out, purchased the book and stuck it on a bookshelf. Ten years and five or six bookshelves later I finally grabbed it for my daily commutes (spurred by a recent field trip to the home of his first fire station with some people who know him and think he’s an a-hole and, on the same trip, seeing a reference in Carter Wiseman’s new book where Venturi claims to have turned Kahn on to traditional/historical architecture – not Kahn’s Beaux Arts education at Penn!).

So anyway, this is a fairly quick read despite the fact that some heavy editing should have been considered. Seemingly everything published, mailed, not published, and not mailed that Venturi penned is included under a handful of headings. In this case less would have been more. But despite my fatigue, I would recommend much of it if only for exposure to the cantankerous old man that my friend mentioned. The worst pieces included his bullet-point lists of aphorisms. Some of the better writings revolved around his critiques of the competition scene, architectural critics (especially the “uneducated” British representatives), and some of his opinions towards Hyper-restrictive preservationist types. And of course the numerous claims – sprinkled throughout – about inventing this or that, and changing the architectural world (teaching “as far as he knew” the first course on architectural theory in US schools).

All this recent stuff concludes with his 1950 MFA thesis project for a small chapel and a focus on contextual response. Whereas this makes sense in exposing some of the early ideas that he further developed into the content of Complexity and Contradiction, by page 334 this was not what I wanted to read. It all ended well however, as the last thesis board included the sentence, “The color scheme of the truss effects a gaiety [sic] necessary in a boy’s chapel.” thus apparently necessitating a footnote reminding suspicious readers that this was written 46 years ago!

Nonetheless, for someone who admits he’d become too old and busy to write, it seems logical that he would realize that more just might be a bore.

[Jasonarasim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually kind of funny in a super geeky architectural way.