Robert Venturi

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Robert Venturi (2008)
The Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery , London , (1985–91)

Robert Venturi (born June 25, 1925 in Philadelphia ; † September 18, 2018 in Philadelphia ) was an American architect and one of the leading theorists of postmodern architecture . Together with his wife Denise Scott Brown, he is one of the most influential architects of the 20th century .

Life

Venturi was born in Philadelphia in 1925. He came from a religious family; his parents were members of the Quaker denomination . Venturi first attended the Episcopal Academy in Merion, Pennsylvania, and studied architecture at Princeton University from 1944 . He graduated from Princeton in 1947 summa cum laude . There he also obtained a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in 1950 . In 1951 he worked for some time for Eero Saarinen in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and then for Louis Kahn in Philadelphia. In 1954 he received a scholarship for Rome, the Rome Prize Fellowship of the American Academy in Rome . He studied in Rome for two years and toured Europe. In 1960 Venturi founded his own office, which he ran from 1964 together with John Rauch and from 1969 with his wife Denise Scott Brown. Venturi has taught at the Yale School of Architecture and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

Act

Venturi is considered an important representative of postmodern architecture , especially as a theorist and publicist. In 1991 he was awarded the Pritzker Prize , in 1992 the National Medal of Arts and in 2016, together with his wife Denise Scott Brown, the gold medal of the American Institute of Architects . He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1984 , of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1990, and of the American Philosophical Society since 2006 . Since 1997 he has been an honorary member of the Association of German Architects BDA . In 2011 Robert Venturi was elected a member ( NA ) of the National Academy of Design in New York .

With Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture , published in 1966, Venturi wrote one of the fundamental works of postmodern architectural theory. The renowned US architecture critic Vincent Scully described the book, which has been translated into twelve languages, "as the most important writing on building since Le Corbusier's 'Vers une Architecture' of 1923". Venturi's text is a settlement with the architecture of "orthodox modernism" and a plea for a new architecture that reflects the complexity of modern societies. The contradictions in the program, construction, materiality and expression should not be covered up, but allowed and creatively activated. Venturi used less is a bore against the phrase less is more that was widespread among architects, designers and artists in the early 20th century .

In the bestseller Learning from Las Vegas , Venturi uses the example of the Las Vegas Strip , the central high street of Las Vegas , to refer to the everyday architecture of America and places it at the center of the architectural debate. Not the buildings of the Modern were " functional ," but just the trivial and sometimes ugly forms of construction, which accounted for most of the cities and their real functionality every day put in practice to the test. With this he advocated the functionality of the popular and spoke out against the unpopular functionalism.

Publications

  • Robert Venturi: Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture . The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1966, German: Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture . Bauwelt Fundamente Volume 50, Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig 1978.
  • Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour: Learning from Las Vegas . MIT Press, Cambridge 1972, German: Learning from Las Vegas: On the iconography and architectural symbolism of the business city , Bauwelt Fundamente Volume 53, Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig 1979, ISBN 3-7643-6362-2 .
  • Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown: A View from the Campidoglio: Selected Essays, 1953-1984 . Harper & Row, New York 1984.
  • Robert Venturi: Iconography and Electronics. Upon a Generic Architecture. A View from the Drafting Room. MIT Press, Cambridge 1998.

Important buildings (selection)

Vanna Venturi House, Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania (1959–1964)
Guild House Retirement Home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1960–1966)

literature

  • Martino Stierli and Hilar Stadler (eds.): Las Vegas Studio. Images from the archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. Scheidegger & Spiess Verlag, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-85881-229-2 .
  • Martino Stierli: Venturis Grand Tour. On the genealogy of postmodernism. Viewpoints Documents No. 4, Verlag Standpunkte, Basel 2011, ISBN 978-3-9523540-7-0 .
  • Süddeutsche Zeitung April 17, 2009 (p. 11): Learning from Las Vegas . (on the occasion of the exhibition in the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (Frankfurt) until June 2009)
  • Martino Stierli: Moved into the picture: Aesthetics, form and discourse of the city in Venturis and Scott Browns Learning from Las Vegas ETH Zurich 2007, DNB 994439121 (Dissertation ETH Zurich 2007, VII, 483 pages, illustrations, 7 microfiches 24x).

Web links

Commons : Robert Venturi  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jonathan Hilburg: Robert Venturi passes away. In: The Architect's Newspaper. September 19, 2018, accessed September 19, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Dare to dare more botched liveliness in FAZ from June 25, 2015, page 12
  3. ↑ 2016 AIA Gold Medal Recipient
  4. ↑ nationalacademy.org: Living Academicians "V" / Venturi, Robert NA 2011 ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on July 18, 2015) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nationalacademy.org
  5. ↑ Vincent Scully: Introduction , in: Robert Venturi: Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture . Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel 2000, ISBN 978-3-7643-6359-8 , p. 9
  6. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Against boredom. Retrieved January 6, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Venturi, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American architect
DATE OF BIRTH June 25, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , USA
DATE OF DEATH 18th September 2018
Place of death Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , USA