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Indepth Arts News:
"Out of the Ordinary: The Architecture and Design of Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Associates"
2002-11-08 until 2003-02-02
Carnegie Museum of Art
Pittsburgh, PA,
USA
Out of the Ordinary: The Architecture and Design of
Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Associates, on view at Carnegie
Museum of Art's Heinz Architectural Center, surveys the work of one of the late 20th century's most influential
architecture and design firms. Out of the Ordinary, with a wide variety of
objects, including architectural drawings, models, and photographs, as well
as furniture, textiles, and decorative arts, documents more than four
decades of the firm's eye-catching, iconoclastic work.
Venturi Scott Brown and Associates (VSBA) is known for combining design
elements in unexpected ways-an approach that has spurred some to include
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown among the founders of architectural
Post modernism. Though they reject the Post- modernist label, Venturi and
Scott Brown are guided by design principles that contrast sharply with
Modernism's tendency to pare structures to essentials: turning the
Modernist's rallying cry "Less is more" against itself, Venturi declared
"Less is a bore." The firm has become known for an eclecticism that draws
freely from varied sources, such as historic design styles and popular
culture, including contemporary commercial architecture and advertising.
In 1950, Robert Venturi completed his master's thesis at Princeton, which
sent out the first shoots of what would flower into an enduring
architectural philosophy. Against the Modernist tendency to treat buildings
as solitary objects without regard for their settings, Venturi argued that a
building derives meaning from its context, and different contexts require
different forms of architectural expression. A decade later, Venturi met
Denise Scott Brown, when both were teaching at the University of
Pennsylvania. Despite vastly different backgrounds, from the outset Venturi
and Scott Brown shared fundamental beliefs about design. They have been
married since 1967 and became business partners in 1969.
Although Venturi has never completely cast off the general principles of
Modernism, VSBA prefers an eclectic and practical approach-what they term
"messy vitality"-to the stripped-down, universalizing tendencies of
Modernism's earlier, more dogmatic advocates. VSBA's buildings, urban
planning projects, and decorative arts designs all have strong links to
their physical or historical contexts, so that while their projects are
obviously contemporary, they strike a note of familiarity.
Venturi revealed his synthetic attitude and intelligence as early as his
second completed building, the house in Philadelphia that he designed for
his mother. For the façade of the Vanna Venturi House (1959-65), he
combined a handful of basic architectural elements-in this case a gable,
door, windows, and chimney-arranging the forms into a simple, inviting
design that is plainly modern, yet also a strong expression of traditional
ideas of home.
In the nearly four decades since the completion of the Vanna Venturi House,
VSBA has created residential designs and many other types of buildings that
are freely inspired by historical and contemporary sources. In his Eclectic
House Series (1977), Venturi presented a sequence of elevations that
captures the firm's inclusive yet radical embrace of history. From ancient
Egypt through contemporary commercial architecture, with stops in the
Gothic, Renaissance, and Art Nouveau periods, among others, the drawings
chart architectural history as imagined in the design of dwellings.
Other objects in Out of the Ordinary spotlight the firm's fundamental design
principles. A replica of the large coffee cup that Venturi incorporated
into the façade of Grand's Restaurant (1961-62) reveals the architect's
developing concept of "decorated sheds," or utilitarian buildings, some with
oversized graphic elements (so-called "supergraphics"), that announce the
building's function. The willingness to blend iconic and vernacular
architectural elements has been consistent in VSBA's designs. For the Reedy
Creek Improvement District Emergency Services Headquarters and Fire Station
(1992-93), designed for Walt Disney World Resort, Lake Buena Vista, Florida,
VSBA created an exterior that declares the building's purpose through
imagery associated in the popular imagination with fire departments, in
particular the black-on-white spotted coat of a fire company's Dalmatian
mascot.
Recent high-profile international projects reveal the consistency with which
VSBA has applied and interpreted that architectural philosophy. For the
critically acclaimed Sainsbury Wing of London's National Gallery (1985-91),
VSBA sensitively related the building's façade to its 19th-century neighbors
on Trafalgar Square, creating an historically inflected yet distinctly
contemporary complement to the original building. The firm's design for its
largest commercial commission to date, the Hotel Mielmonte Nikko Kirifuri in
Nikko, Japan (1992-97), brings together a variety of traditional
architectural features and elements of Japan's lively contemporary
commercial streetscape. Set in a national forest, the spa and hotel manage
to harmonize the diverse aspects of Japanese culture.
Like the firm's architecture, VSBA's decorative arts projects are marked by
practicality enlivened with bold eclecticism. The Campidoglio Tray
(1980-83), created for Italian housewares retailer Alessi, has a radiating
star pattern that mirrors Michelangelo's design for the pavement in Rome's
Piazza del Campidoglio. A Cuckoo Clock (1986-88), also designed for Alessi,
has bright colors and unexpected proportions, adding contemporary features
to a timepiece with a decidedly traditional form. Among numerous other
decorative arts objects, Out of the Ordinary includes chairs that VSBA
created for Knoll between 1978 and 1984-the Chippendale, Sheraton, Art
Nouveau, and Gothic Revival chairs. Each borrows from historic designs yet
is sturdy, comfortable, and clearly modern.
The exhibition includes a multimedia installation, The Architect's Dream
(2001), inspired by an 1840 painting by the same name. The original work,
created by the Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole, synthesizes an
astonishing variety of historical architectural styles into a utopian scene.
In their version of The Architect's Dream, VSBA used digital technology to
blend contemporary and historical images, creating a work that not only
dramatizes the firm's liberal embrace of historical influences, but also
serves to illustrate their philosophy of unifying our architectural past
with the practical demands of the present day.
Tracy Myers, associate curator of architecture at Carnegie Museum of Art's
Heinz Architectural Center, considers the exhibition a fitting compendium of
the firm's wide-ranging, decades-long practice. "The scope of Venturi,
Scott Brown and Associates' ouevre-geographically, typologically, and in
terms of scale-is really quite remarkable. Even more remarkable is the fact
that they have hewn to their design philosophy with such constancy, and this
exhibition dramatizes their fidelity to their principles as well as their
creativity."
IMAGE:
Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Associates
Eclectic House Series, 1977
elevations, Robert Venturi
Colored plastic film on photomechanical print
24 5/8 x 25 1/2 in.
Collection of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Inc.
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