ROBERT VENTURI

Robert Venturi

Robert Venturi

Introduction

Robert Venturi, American architect, designer and influential theorist, was born in Philadelphia in 1925. From 1943 until 1950, Venturi revised architecture at Princeton University. For a while Robert Venturi worked in the perform of Eero Saarinen and Louis Kahn. From 1954 until 1956, Robert Venturi was in Rome on a scholarship to the American Academy. Robert Venturi educated at some universities and institutes.

A sequence of addresses Robert Venturi provided at the Museum of Modern Art in New York was released as the influential book "Complexity and Contradiction in Modern Architecture" in 1966. In 1973 Robert Venturi co-authored, with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, a book that made just as large-scale an influence on architecture theory: "Learning from Las Vegas". A quintessential Postmodernist, Robert Venturi supports a symbolic, complicated dialect of types that is simpler for modern man to seem snug with. In 1958 John Rauch and Robert Venturi based an architectural perform in Philadelphia, which by 1989 had become Venturi Scott Brown & Associates, with Denise Scott Brown as a partner.

Robert Venturi's most significant buildings encompass the Sainsbury wing of the National Gallery in London (1991), the Philadelphia Orchestra Hall (1987-1996), and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego (1996). In 2000 the Venturi-designed Campus Center at Princeton University was finished. For Knoll International, Robert Venturi designed some parts of furnishings, encompassing the "Grandmother" (1984) sofa. Between 1978 and 1984, Robert Venturi designed the "Venturi Collection", a line of nine laminated timber seating bragging backs that are quotations from diverse time span styles. For Alessi, Robert Venturi designed a four-part tea and coffee service for the 1983 "Tea & Coffee Piazza" project. In 1990 Robert Venturi designed a tea and coffee service for Swid Powell (Glancey 2000, 12).

Partnerships:

Early in his vocation, worked for Eero Saarinen, and then in the Philadelphia agencies of Louis I. Kahn and Oscar Stonorov.

Partnered with John Rauch 1964-1989

Since 1960 has cooperated with his wife, the architect, planner, scribe, and teacher Denise Scott Brown. Their firm is Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates (VSBA).

Important Buildings:

1962: The Vanna Venturi House, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

1972: Trubek House, Nantucket Island, Massachusetts

1973: Brant House, Greenwich, Connecticut

1973 to 1976: Allen Art Museum Addition, Oberlin, Ohio

1975: House in Tuckers Town, Bermuda

1975: Tucker House, Mount Kisco, New York

1983: Gordon Wu Hall, Princeton, New Jersey

1994: Bank construction in Celebration, Florida

Books by Robert Venturi:

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

In this groundbreaking publication, released in 1966, Robert Venturi disputed modernism and commemorated the blend of historic methods in large towns like Rome.

Learning from Las Vegas

Subtitled The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form this postmodernist classic called the "vulgar billboards" of the Vegas Strip emblems for a new architecture. Published in 1972, the publication was in writing by Robert Venturi, Steven Izenour, and Denise Scott Brown (Hoeveler 2003, 10).

Awards:

1985: AIA Firm Award

1990: AIA Medal of Distinction, The Pennsylvania Society of Architects

1991: Pritzker Architecture Prize

1992: National Medal of Arts, U.S. Presidential accolade

Famous Quote by Robert Venturi:

Rejecting the ease of modernism and answering to the Mies van der ...