| Description |
374 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
Sweet and Sour -- A Not So Gentle Manifesto -- Homage to Vincent Scully and His Shingle Style, with Reminiscences and Some Outcomes -- Donald Drew Egbert -- A Tribute -- Notes for a Lecture Celebrating the Centennial of the American Academy in Rome Delivered in Chicago -- Adorable Discoveries When I Was a Semi-Naive Fellow at the American Academy in Rome That I Never Forget -- Armando Brasini Revisited -- Furness and Taste -- Frank Lloyd Wright Essay for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts -- Words on the Guggenheim Museum in Response to a Request by Thomas Krens -- For an Anniversary of the Bauhaus, 1994 -- Learning from Aalto -- A Protest Concerning the Extension of the Salk Center / Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown -- Thoughts about Evolving Teachers and Students -- Louis Kahn Remembered: Notes from a Lecture at the Opening of the Kahn Exhibition in Japan, January 1993 -- Essay Derived from the Acceptance Speech, the Madison Medal, Princeton University-- Robert Venturi's Response at the Pritzker Prize Award Ceremony at the Palacio de Iturbide, Mexico City, May 16, 1991 -- Episcopal Academy Fiftieth Class Reunion Statement -- Two Naifs in Japan / Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown -- "Venturi Shops" -- Las Vegas after Its Classic Age / Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown -- Some Agonized Thoughts about Maintenance and Preservation Concerning Humble Buildings of the Recent Past -- Guild House, Twenty-Five Years Later -- Thoughts of Fire Station No. 4 Twenty-Five Years Later -- Speech for the Conference "Interiors for Historic Buildings" -- The Preservation Game at Penn: An Emotional Response -- A Series of Responses for Via, the Journal of the School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania -- Personal Approaches and Positions toward Contemporary Architectural Practice / Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown-- Letter Sent to Several Architect Selection Committees Concerning Competitions, Drafted Members of the Office of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates -- Answer to Charles K. Hoyt, Editor, Architectural Record, Regarding Competitions -- The Overwhelming of the Architect: What It Takes to Be an Architect in the Nineties: A Modest Tirade Mainly for Myself -- Letter to Friends about to Visit the Sainbury Wing -- The Hall and the Avenue / Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown -- Toward a Scenographic Architecture for Today: Generic Form with Ordinary-Extraordinary Signs: A Description of the Kirifuri Resort Project in Nikko / Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown -- Imagery via Lighting and Electronics for Loker Commons, Memorial Hall, Harvard University -- Whitehall Ferry Terminal -- Plus Ca Change ... Encore -- A Somewhat Intemperate Response to Current Criticism of the Whitehall Ferry Design -- Thoughts on the Architecture of the Scientific Workplace Community, Change, and Continuity-- From Invention to Convention in Architecture -- Note on the Beloved Princeton Campus as a Basis for a Proposed Planning Study -- More Thoughts on Context and Function: The American Campus in the American Town -- General Thoughts Concerning Designing for Architecture on American Campuses -- Being Repulsive: As I Travel I See Elements of Buildings from My Hotel Window That Originated in My/Our Work and Have Been Exploited All Over -- Windows -- c. '65 -- Architecture as Elemental Shelter, the City as Valid Decon / Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown -- Window vs. Trend: The Current Academization of American Architectural Education -- The Vision Thing: Why It Sucks -- "Ceci Tuera Cela" Is Now "Cela Est Devenu Ceci": Some Thoughts Concerning Architecture and Media -- Letter to the Editor of the Architectural Review, February 17, 1987 -- Letter to R. Craig Miller, Curator of the Department of Design and Architecture at the Denver Art Museum -- Letter Not Sent to an Architecture Critic-- J'Adore St. Paul's -- Mals Mots: Aphorisms -- Sweet and Sour -- by an Anti-Hero Architect -- Introduction to My M.F.A. Thesis -- Contest in Architectural Composition: M.F.A. Thesis, Princeton University |
| Summary |
"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. Venturi, who along with his partner, Denise Scott Brown, made the vulgar acceptable and found virtue in the commercial, the kitsch, and the ordinary, is respected equally as a theorist and an architect who communicates his architectural ideas, formal and verbal, with grace and wit. These essays, letters, reports, lectures, manifestos, and polemical texts offer a candid, uncensored view from the drafting room, commonsense responses urgent and diverse, of a busy architect, in part a reaction against the conceptualizing of architecture today invaded by other disciplines and made obscure. Seven of the essays were coauthored with Denise Scott Brown. 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 lead essays can be described as an argument embracing reference and representation in our information age, whose technical basis is truly of our time and whose iconographic basis derives from a long tradition in architecture including hieroglyphic Egyptian pylons, early Christian basilicas, scenographic Baroque interiors, and even eclectic Romantic architecture and twentieth-century electronic signs and displays. 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"--Back cover |
| Analysis |
Architecture History |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references |
| Subject |
Architecture, Modern -- 20th century.
|
| LC no. |
95026027 |
| ISBN |
0262220512 (alk. paper) |
|
