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I am for messy
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture vitality over obvious unity. I include the non sequitur and proclaim the duality.
I am for richness of meaning rather than clarity of meaning; for the implicit
function as well as the explicit function. I prefer 'both-and' to 'either-or', black and
While most often glibly cited for his inversion of Mies von der Rohe's white and sometimes gray, to black and white. A valid architecture evokes many levels
decloration 'less ismore', Robert Venturi (b 1925, Philodelphio) mode on of meaning and combinations of focus: its space and its elements become readable and
indelible impression on W estern orchitectural thinkingComplexity
with workable in several ways at once.
and Contradiction in Architecture. Stimuloted in port by
0 stoy inRome But an architecture of complexity and contradiction has a special obligation toward
os 0 Fellow of the American Academy in 1956-57, Venturi's polemic the whole: its truth must be in its totality or its implications of totality. It must embody
presented one of the most compelling orguments ogoinst Modernist the difficult unity of inclusion rather than the easy unity of exclusion. More is not less.
functionolismot the time ond poved the woy for the development of Post-
Modernism.
Non-Straightforward Architecture: A Gentle Manifesto Complexity and Contradiction vs Simplification or Picturesqueness Orthodox
I like complexity and contradiction in architecture. I do not like the incoherence or Modern architects have tended to recognise complexity insufficiently or
arbitrariness of incompetent architecture nor the precious intricacies of picturesqueness inconsistently. In their attempt to break with tradition and start all over again, they
or expressionism. Instead, I speak of complex and contradictory architecture based on idealized the primitive and elementary at the expense of the diverse and
the richness and ambiguity of modern experience, including experience which is sophisticated ...
inherent in art. Everywhere, except in architecture, complexity and contradiction have But now our position is different: 'At the same time that the problems increase in
been acknowledged, from Godels proof of ultimate inconsistency in mathematics to TS quantity, complexity, and difficulty they also change faster than before.'
Eliot's analysis of 'difficult' poetry and Joseph Albers' definition of the paradoxical
quality of painting. Ambiguity
But architecture is necessarily complex and contradictory in its very inclusion of the ... indeed complexity of meaning, with its resultant ambiguity and tension, has been
traditional Vitruvian elements of commodity, firmness, and delight. And today the characteristic of painting and amply recognized in art criticism ...
wants of program, structure, mechanical equipment, and expression, even in single In literature, too, critics have been willing to accept complexity and contraaiction in