Architect rejected austere modernism and urged a ‘messy vitality’ in design
Life Story
Robert Venturi, who has died aged 93, was often described as the grandfather of post-modernism – the reaction against the abstract modernist landscape of the 1950s and 1960s. In Britain he was best known as the designer, with his wife and fellow architect Denise Scott Brown, of the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, the building that replaced the original ‘‘monstrous carbuncle’’ denounced by Prince Charles.
A shy professor from Philadelphia, Venturi burst on to the architectural scene in 1966 with his manifesto Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, in which, bravely for the time, he declared his love for
Renaissance,
Baroque and
Mannerist Italy, and called for a return to symbolic meaning in architecture.
Where modernist theory decreed that function should be the only guiding principle behind the design of a building, Venturi argued that deliberate ambiguity and contradiction were preferable: ‘‘I am for messy vitality over obvious unity.’’
To Mies van der Rohe’s famous aphorism ‘‘Less is more’’, Venturi retorted: ‘‘Less is a bore’’; and he proceeded to build a classically inspired house for his mother, the Vanna Venturi House in Pennsylvania. The house, incorporating a gabled roof that culminates in a deep slit instead of the more conventional peak, was revolutionary for its time, but has come to be regarded as a post-modern classic. Architects weary of the grey, rectilinear aesthetic of the 1960s breathed a sigh of relief.
In fact, Venturi later regretted his riff on van der Rohe, a Modernist he much admired, and claimed the message of Complexity and Contradiction had been misunderstood. His point had been that architects should learn from Borromini, Michelangelo and Vanbrugh, not simply copy them.
The post-modern ‘‘followers’’ of Venturi often lacked his wit and erudition. As a result, he was blamed for the theme-park style cityscape, full of high-rises in pastel colours and adorned with ‘‘ironic’’ historical references – pediments, gables, arches and the like – a style described by Jack Pringle, past president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, as ‘‘trite dolls-house architecture’’.
Venturi himself supported the objections to much of what passes as ‘‘post-modern’’, claiming that he often felt ‘‘more comfortable with my critics than with those who have agreed with me’’. In 2004 he declared: ‘‘I am not a post-modernist, and I have never been a post-modernist.’’
The National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing remains the Venturis’ most controversial work, partly because, in replacing the competition-winner – killed off after Prince Charles’ notorious intervention in 1986 – the whole debacle became a flashpoint in the bunfight between the conservative and
Robert Venturi Architect b June 25, 1925 d September 18, 2018
modernist factions that passed for architectural debate at the time.
When the new wing finally opened in 1991, it received a vicious critical roasting from architects and their allies in the press, and was variously described as ‘‘a monstrous failure’’, ‘‘a camp joke’’, ‘‘picturesque mediocre slime’’ and a ‘‘vulgar American piece of post-modern mannerist pastiche’’.
For a time Venturi seemed to have achieved the impossible – offending both sides of the debate.
Nevertheless, for the most part the public, and indeed many critics, loved the new wing – and this year it was grade 1 listed. Importantly (and in contrast to some other recent gallery designs), behind the facade there was a functioning building whose galleries showed up the early Italian Renaissance paintings, for which they were mainly designed, beautifully.
The Venturis, however, bruised by the critical drubbing they had received, went home to Philadelphia and did not return.
The son of an Italian-american wholesale fruit merchant, Robert Charles Venturi was born in Philadelphia. Brought up as a Quaker, he registered as a conscientious objector during World War II.
Inspired by his parents’ love of old buildings, he entered Princeton to study architecture. He completed his studies at the American Academy in Rome, and it was here that his ideas about architecture began to take shape. He described the city as ‘‘architectural heaven’’ and would cite Italian Renaissance architecture as the greatest influence on his thinking.
In the 1960s he taught at the University of Pennsylvania, rising to become associate professor of architecture. It was here that he met Denise Scott Brown. They married in 1967 and she joined her husband’s practice the same year.
She survives him, with their son. –