Robert Venturi
Early Life and Education
Robert Venturi was born on June 25, 1925, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He grew up in a middle-class Quaker family. His father was a fruit and produce wholesaler. He attended the Episcopal Academy in Merion, Pennsylvania.
He began his architectural studies at Princeton University, where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1947 and his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1950. He was a brilliant student, and he studied under the influential architect and theorist Jean Labatut.
In 1954, Venturi won the prestigious Rome Prize, which allowed him to study at the American Academy in Rome for two years. His time in Rome was a transformative experience. He was deeply impressed by the city’s rich and complex architectural history, particularly the Mannerist and Baroque periods. He spent his time sketching and analyzing the great works of architects like Michelangelo and Borromini. This early immersion in the history of architecture would have a profound and lasting influence on his work.
After returning from Rome in 1956, he worked in the offices of two of the most important architects of the 20th century: Eero Saarinen and Louis Kahn. He worked with Kahn for several years and was deeply influenced by his poetic and monumental approach to architecture.
In 1958, he established his own architectural practice in Philadelphia. In 1964, he went into partnership with John Rauch. The same year, he met Denise Scott Brown, a young architect and planner who had been born in South Africa and educated in London. They were married in 1967, and she became his partner in both life and work. She would have a profound and decisive influence on the development of his architectural and theoretical ideas.
Architectural Philosophy and Career
Robert Venturi’s architectural philosophy was a radical and witty critique of the purist and heroic modernism of the 20th century. He was the most important and influential figure in the Postmodern movement, and his work and writings helped to usher in a new era of architectural thought and practice.
His philosophy is famously summed up in his gentle manifesto, “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture,” which was published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1966. The book was a powerful and erudite critique of the “less is more” ethos of Mies van der Rohe. In its place, Venturi proposed his own, more inclusive and ironic mantra: “Less is a bore.”
The book was a call for a new kind of architecture, one that was “messy,” “hybrid,” and “ambiguous.” He argued that architecture should embrace the complexity and contradiction of modern life, rather than trying to impose a simple and universal order. He drew on a wide range of historical examples, from Mannerist and Baroque architecture to the vernacular and commercial architecture of the American landscape, to make his case.
Venturi’s philosophy was further developed in the 1972 book “Learning from Las Vegas,” which he co-authored with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour. The book was a groundbreaking and highly controversial study of the commercial strip and the casino architecture of Las Vegas. The authors argued that architects had much to learn from the “ugly and ordinary” architecture of the everyday landscape, and they celebrated the “decorated shed” as a model for a more communicative and symbolic form of architecture.
Venturi and Scott Brown’s architectural work was a direct expression of their theoretical ideas. They were not interested in creating heroic or original forms; instead, they were interested in creating an architecture that was “ordinary” and “conventional.” They used historical allusion, irony, and wit to create buildings that were both familiar and strange, both simple and complex.
They were pioneers in the use of signage and ornament in modern architecture, and they believed that a building should be able to communicate with a wide audience. Their work was a celebration of the richness and diversity of American popular culture, and it was a powerful and influential alternative to the abstract and elitist modernism of the post-war era.
Notable and Famous Works
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s portfolio includes a wide range of projects, from small houses to large institutional buildings.
The Vanna Venturi House (1964) in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, which Venturi designed for his mother, is his most famous and important work. The small house is a masterpiece of Postmodernism and a powerful demonstration of the ideas in “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture.” The house is a complex and witty reinterpretation of the traditional gabled house, with a broken pediment, a “non-functional” arch, and a staircase that leads to nowhere.
The Guild House (1963) in Philadelphia is a low-income housing project for the elderly that was one of their first major commissions. The building is a simple, brick “decorated shed” with a large, arched window and a non-functional, gold-anodized television antenna on the roof, which was a witty and ironic symbol of the residents’ primary form of entertainment.
The Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery (1991) in London is one of their most important and controversial public buildings. The extension to the famous museum is a complex and subtle exercise in contextualism, with a design that both respects and subverts the classical architecture of the original building.
Franklin Court (1976) in Philadelphia is an innovative and highly conceptual project that marks the site of Benjamin Franklin’s house, which had been demolished in the 19th century. Instead of reconstructing the house, Venturi and Scott Brown created a “ghost” house, a full-scale, steel-framed outline of the original building, which sits in a sunken courtyard above a new underground museum.
The Seattle Art Museum (1991) is another of their major museum projects. The building is a simple, limestone-clad “decorated shed” with a series of colorful and playful arches at its entrance.
Awards, Honors, and Legacy
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown have received numerous awards and honors for their work. In 1991, Venturi was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The decision to award the prize to Venturi alone, without his partner Denise Scott Brown, was highly controversial and has been the subject of ongoing debate and criticism. In 2013, a student group at Harvard started a petition to have Scott Brown retroactively recognized as a joint winner of the prize.
Venturi also received the AIA 25-Year Award for the Vanna Venturi House in 1989. In 2016, Venturi and Scott Brown were jointly awarded the AIA Gold Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the American Institute of Architects.
Their legacy is that of the founding figures of Postmodernism. Their writings and their buildings fundamentally changed the course of architectural history in the late 20th century. They challenged the dogmatism of the modern movement and opened up a new and more inclusive set of possibilities for architectural thought and practice.
They were pioneers in the study of the vernacular and the commercial landscape, and they taught a generation of architects to look at the world around them with new eyes. They were champions of an architecture that was communicative, symbolic, and accessible to a wide audience.
While the Postmodern style that they helped to create has fallen out of fashion, their ideas about complexity, contradiction, and the importance of learning from the everyday landscape remain as relevant and as challenging as ever. They were two of the most important and influential architectural thinkers of their time. Robert Venturi died on September 18, 2018.