Architectural Context Part 6: Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown & Steven Izenour
Architectural Context Part 5: Colin Rowe & Fred Koetter
In their book “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture” Venturi and Scott Brown argue that the main role of an architect is the creation of orderly wholes through the use of conventional parts and with occasional introduction of new parts. Furthermore, similar to Picasso’s “Bulls Head” example he argues, that it is possible to create new meanings through an unconventional organization of parts within the whole.¹ Venturi writes:
Gestalt psychology maintains that context contributes meaning to a part and change in context causes a change in meaning. The architect thereby, through the organization of parts, creates meaningful contexts for them within the whole. Through the unconventional organization of conventional parts, he is able to create new meanings within the whole. If he uses convention unconventionally, if he organizes familiar things in an unfamiliar way, he is changing their contexts, and he can use even the cliché to gain a fresh effect. Familiar things seen in an unfamiliar context become perceptually new as well as old.²
This rather simple idea lays in the foundation of Venturi’s gentle manifesto for non-straightforward architecture. Venturi argues that in every discipline complexity and contradictions present within the field have been acknowledged, starting from Gödel’s proof of ultimate inconsistency in mathematics to T.S.Eliots’s analysis of “difficult” poetry. However, predominant architectural movement at the time (Modernism) was still loyal to its “puritanically moral language.” ³ Venturi believes that with emerging new programmatic, structural and mechanical complexities, the Modernistic approach can no longer maintain its consistency. He argues that architects of modernism were highly selective in determining which problems they wanted to solve instead of being concerned with which problems should be solved. This simplification and selectiveness is at the same time the strength and the weakness of Modernism. Van der Rohe’s glass house would have never been possible if he were to consider all the complexities that accompany the living; thus, Rohe designed a structure that oversimplified the phenomenon of living allowing him to achieve incredible clarity in his architecture. However, as Venturi suggest this reduction or simplification is merely a method for understanding a complex phenomenon, and it should not be mistaken for the final goal. He argues for the richness of meaning rather than for the clarity of it.⁴ “Both-and” instead of “either-or.” However, Venturi highlights that complexity and contradiction should not be merely a device for subjective expressionism. Complexity should be derived from interior characteristics, particular context and from the structure of the whole rather than be a device for willful self-expression. The simplified or superficially complex form will not allow creating the multitude of qualities that can be synthesized by justified complexity and meaningful contradiction.⁵ Venturi brings a great deal of examples of how the complexity and contradiction were employed by architects of Renaissance and Baroque to enrich the meaning that architectural forms conveyed. In his example of Francesco Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome (Figure Below) he suggest that the equal treatment of all four wings of the building would imply a Greek cross in plan nevertheless the wings are distorted towards east west-axis suggesting a Latin cross at the same time the continuity of the walls suggests a distorted circular plan.
These contradictions remain continuous even in the section of the building where the pattern of the ceiling in its expression suggest a dome resting on a Greek cross. ⁶ The overall building is continuous, yet its elements contradict its internal logic and thus result in ambiguous situations.
For Venturi, the contradiction and complexity are inherent to the discipline of architecture and can be observed on yet another level in a form of relationships between the inside and the outside. He argues that the contradiction between inside and outside is one of the essential characteristics of urban architecture. ⁷ Venturi writes:
Since the inside is different from the outside, the wall becomes an architectural event. Architecture occurs at the meeting of interior and exterior forces. These interior and environmental forces are both general and particular, generic and circumstantial. Architecture as the wall between the inside and the outside becomes the spatial record of this resolution and its drama. ⁸
In the same example of Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, one can see that the building has two distinct facades each serving to a particular urban setting. Behind the façade, the church was designed inside out, but the front of the building was designed from outside in. The leftover space that occurred from the collision of these two methodologies was taken care of with the use of a poché. For Venturi architecture is a spatial record of clashing internal and external forces, this clash is what produces architectural form. The collision between contrasting forces from inside and outside produce the collage of architectural artefact, and the edges of the collage are treated as a poché.
Venturi’s another examination of relationships between urban artifact and its context are explicitly represented in his book “Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form.” In “Learning from Las Vegas” Venturi suggest that the way people experience the cities has changed during the last several decades. From his point of view driver thirty years ago could maintain his orientation in space rather easily however with the wide availability of vehicles both the structure of the city and the speed at which cities are experienced has transformed radically. By shortening the amount of time required to cross large distances vehicles stretched the pattern of the city contributing to urban sprawl. Additionally, he claims that driver today has no time to solve riddles to determine their location in space while at the same time controlling the vehicle. Instead, the driver relies on clear signs for orientation in vast spaces at high speed.⁹
Las Vegas is a clear illustration of this phenomenon. For instance, the sign of Motel Monticello is visible even before the motel itself appears in the visual field. Thus, Venturi argues that the architecture of signs is anti-spatial since it is an architecture of communication over space. This new urban context that is governed by vast spaces, high speeds, and complex programs produces a landscape dominated primarily by symbols.¹⁰ Las Vegas employs architecture of bold, straightforward communication through symbols instead of the uncertainty of subtle formal expressions. This transformation of the cities becomes clear when one compares the ancient Middle Eastern bazaar with the Las Vegas Strip. The bazar contains no sign while Las Vegas is primarily composed of signs. In the Bazar, the communication works through proximity influencing all the senses of the by-passers.¹¹ On the commercial strip, however, the objects that are in close proximity mostly contain no merchandise. The building itself is far from the highway almost hidden behind the parking lot that is filled with cars. The big sign leaps to connect the driver to the commercial zone.
From this comparison it becomes apparent that the way city is experienced is another contextual force that shapes the form and expression of architectural artefacts located within it. Signs make verbal and symbolic connections through space communicating a complexity of meanings in few seconds from far away. Spatial relationships are made by symbols more than by forms. Symbols dominate the space and signs become more important than architecture. The signs are extravagant the buildings are cheap, hidden as a modest necessity. Occasionally the significance of the sign would even devour the form of the building and the buildings itself becomes a sign as it is the case with a duck store in the shape of a duck, called “The Long Island Duckling.” According to Venturi, this tendency is nothing new to the discipline of architecture. He argues that baroque domes were also symbols. They were bigger in scale on the outside in order to dominate their urban setting and communicate their symbolic message through large distances.¹² Similar principles were applied to the storefronts of western stores. Storefronts bigger than the interiors they advertised maintained the continuity of the street while at the same time communicating the store’s importance.¹³
As an analytical tool for examining the relationships between architectural form and symbol Venturi defines two archetypes of symbol-form relationship. First, when architectural systems of space structure and program are distorted by buildings overall symbolic significance the building belongs to the category of Ducks (in honour of “The Long Island Duckling”). Second, if the architectural systems of space are directly at the service of the program and symbols are applied independently from form the buildings belongs to the category of decorated sheds.¹⁴
The figures of the ducks and decorated sheds emerge from the ground of Las Vegas where the context of the city and the way the city is experienced influence the form of architectural artefacts. Venturi further demonstrated how the specificity of architecture at Vegas Strip affects its urban texture in a series of figure-ground diagrams. According to Venturi, the zone adjacent to highways is the zone of shared order and the public zone. The zone far away from the highway is an individual order and the private zone (Figure Below).¹⁵
Venturi’s study was not something endemic to Las Vegas. Venturi used the city as a starting point to illustrate that in fact, many other urban conditions including baroque cities shared similar properties of Las Vegas and many architectural artefacts were in facts Ducks and Decorated Sheds. In fact, similarities can be found in a city that one might consider being the exact topological opposite of Las Vegas, i.e., New York. What the wide accessibility of cars did for the horizontal sprawl of Las Vegas the invention of the elevator did for the verticality of New York.
References
[1]: Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: The Museum of Modern Art,1977), 43.
[2]: Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: The Museum of Modern Art,1977), 43.
[3]: Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: The Museum of Modern Art,1977), 16.
[4]: Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: The Museum of Modern Art,1977), 16.
[5]: Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: The Museum of Modern Art,1977), 19.
[6]: Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: The Museum of Modern Art,1977), 28.
[7]: Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: The Museum of Modern Art,1977), 84.
[8]: Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The forgot ten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1977), 86.
[9]: Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The forgot ten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1977), 86–88.
[10]: Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The forgot ten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1977), 9.
[11]: Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The forgot ten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1977), 9.
[12]: Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The forgot ten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1977), 9–10.
[13]: Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The forgot ten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1977), 88.
[14]: Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The forgot ten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1977), 89.
[15]: Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The forgot ten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1977), 88.
