LESS IS A BORE

ROBERT VENTURI

 American architect born in 1925.

He attended the Episcopal Academy in
Philadelphia
and
graduated
from
Princeton University.
He has worked with Eero Saarinen and
Louis I. Kahn before he founded his own
practice in 1958
Founding principal of the firm Venturi,
Scott Brown and Associates, and one of
the major architectural figures in the
twentieth century.
He helped to shape the way that architects, planners and students
experience and think about architecture and the American built
environment.
His buildings, planning, theoretical writings and teaching have
contributed to the expansion of discourse about architecture.

PHILOSOPHY
Venturis theories created more impact than his buildings.
Criticized the absence of cultural meaning in modernist designs.
Coined the maxim LESS IS A BORE .
He believed that the structure and decoration should remain
separate and the decoration should reflect the culture in which it
exists.
In contradiction , he considered symbolism unnecessary since
modern technology and symbolism is difficult to harmonize.
Even the formal design or fully functional design requirement does
not replace or compensate the cultural meaning.
He insisted on the cultural purpose of the project more than the
functional programme, which raised the importance of cultural
context.

DESIGN
An approach to architectural theory and design that drew from
architectural history in analytical, as opposed to stylistic terms.
His buildings always had surprising forms like asymmetric,
geometric, and pop style graphics.
He insisted on the cultural purpose of the project more than
the functional programme, which raised the importance of
cultural context.

WRITINGS
Venturi defied the rational
design method of modernism
in his book "Complexity and
Contradiction in Architecture"
in 1966.

 . In 1972, Venturi, Scott Brown

and Izenour published the
folio,Learning from Las
Vegaslater revised in 1977
asLearning from Las Vegas: the
Forgotten Symbolism of
Architectural Formusing the
student work as a foil for new
theory.
This second manifesto was an
even more stinging rebuke to
orthodox modernism and elite
architectural tastes.
The book coined the terms "Duck" and
"Decorated Shed"--descriptions of the
two predominant ways of embodying
iconography in buildings.
The work of Venturi, Rauch and Scott
Brown adopted the latter strategy,
producing formally simple "decorated
sheds" with rich, complex and often
shocking ornamental flourishes

ARCHITECTURE
His architecture helped to redirect American architecture away from a
widely practiced, often banal, modernism in the 1960s to a more
exploratory, and ultimately indubitable,design approach that openly
drew lessons from architectural history and responded to the everyday
context of the American city.
Venturi's buildings typically juxtapose architectural systems, elements
and aims, to acknowledge the conflicts often inherent in a project or
site.
This "inclusive" approach contrasted with the typical modernist effort to
resolve and unify all factors in a complete and rigidly structuredand
possibly less functional and more simplisticwork of art.

IMPORTANT WORKS

Allen Art Museum Addition, at Oberlin, Ohio, 1973 to 1976.

Brant House, at Greenwich, Connecticut, 1972..
Gordon Wu Hall, at Princeton, New Jersey, 1983.
House in Tuckers Town, at Tucker Town, Bermuda, 1975.
Trubek House, at Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, 1972.
Tucker House, at Mount Kisco, New York, 1975.
Vanna Venturi House, at Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, 1962.

Guild Houseis aresidential

buildinginPhiladelphia,Pennsyl
vania

On the Guild House the applied ornament is explicit and at the

same time contrasts and reinforces the building behind it.
The stripes of white brick placed so high on the building gives it
a scale of a Renaissance Palazzo.
The scale of the central space in proportion to the whole building
creates the reading of a grand entrance to the palazzo as well.
At the top is an arched window; it is not structural but used as a
sign of a different activity at the top, common space.
The location of the arched window, balconies, and base entry
unify the building to a scale of monumental size rather than

VANA VENTURI HOUSE

One of the first prominent works of the
postmodern architecture movement, is
located in the suburban neighborhood
of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania.
The five room house stands only about
30 feet tall at the top of the chimney,
but has a monumental front facade, an
effect
achieved
by
intentionally
manipulating the architectural elements
that
A non-structural
applique
arch and hole in the wall windows,
indicate a buildings
scale.
among other elements, together with Venturis book Complexity and
Contradiction in Architecture were an open challenge to Modernist
orthodoxy.
Architectural historian Vincent Scully called it the biggest small
building of the second half of the twentieth century.

Allen Art Museum Addition

The design of the addition was intended to
represent its purpose in its appearance and serve
as a bridge between the rarified temple
embodied in Gilberts design and the self-effacing
warehouse for art which was needed.
Pink granite and red sandstone cladding were
used to create a decorative facade that plays
composite elements against the whole in a
reinterpretation of the main building's character.

>The 1977 addition to the Allen Memorial Art Museum

represents what Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown have
identified as a decorated shed.
>The building itself is a box-like form with flat surfaces of
varying
materials
recede into space with jogs in its
The presence
of which
the
plan.
asymmetrical strip windows and
low overhang of the roof help
provide overall unity with the old
building,
the recession back into space
lessens the effect of the duality
between old and new, diminishing
the bulk of the addition compared
to the old building.
the use of similarly colored pink
Venturi wanted to unify the physical actualities of site and
granite and sandstone serves as a
situation to the design of the building, creating structures
visual cue to associate the two
which reflect their function in a playful and harmonious way.
structures synthetically.
The 1977 Venturi addition was conceived of as a highly
functional space. It was constructed to meet the growing
needs of both the museum and Art department.

Gordon Wu Hall, at Princeton, New

Jersey

Lieb house

tional Gallery London Sainsbury WingTrabant center

Bibliography
Books referred:
Complexity and contradiction in architecture
Websites referred:
>The Duck or the Decorated Shed-Michael Wildman
> Allen Memorial Art Museum Teacher Resource Packet
www.greatbuildings.com
www.wikipedia.org