"It was very unusual to employ prettiness as part of a building." -- Robert Venturi
Robert Charles Venturi, Jr. (born June 25, 1925 in Philadelphia) is an American architect and founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates. Robert Venturi and his wife and partner, Denise Scott Brown, are regarded among the most influential architects of the twentieth century, both through their architecture and planning, and theoretical writings and teaching. Venturi was awarded the Pritzker Prize in Architecture in 1991. He is also known for coining the maxim "Less is a bore" as antidote to Mies van der Rohe's famous modernist dictum "Less is more". Venturi lives in Philadelphia with Denise Scott Brown. They have a son, James Venturi.
Venturi attended school at the Episcopal Academy in Merion, Pennsylvania. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1947 and received his M.F.A. there in 1950. In 1951 he briefly worked under Eero Saarinen in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and later for Louis Kahn in Philadelphia. He was awarded the Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 1954, where he studied and toured Europe for two years.
From 1954 to 1965, Venturi held teaching positions at the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as Kahn's teaching assistant, an instructor, and later, as associate professor. It was there, in 1960, that he met fellow faculty member, architect and planner Denise Scott Brown. Venturi taught later at the Yale School of Architecture and was a visiting lecturer with Scott Brown in 2003 at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design.
A controversial critic of the blithely functionalist and symbolically vacuous architecture of corporate modernism during the 1950s, Venturi has been considered a counterrevolutionary. He published his "gentle manifesto," Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture in 1966, described in the introduction by Vincent Scully to be "probably the most important writing on the making of architecture since Le Corbusier's 'Vers Une Architecture', of 1923." Derived from course lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, Venturi received a grant from the Graham Foundation in 1965 to aid in its completion. The book opened the way for a new appreciation of architectural history as inspiration for new designs, and made a case for "the difficult whole" rather than the diagrammatic forms popular at the time. The book has been translated and published in 18 languages.
Immediately hailed as a theorist and designer with radical ideas, Venturi went to teach a series of studios at the Yale School of Architecture in the mid-1960s. The most famous of these was a studio in 1968 in which Venturi and Scott Brown led a team of students to document and analyze the Las Vegas Strip, perhaps the least likely subject for a serious research project imaginable. In 1972, with co-authors Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Venturi published the folio, A Significance for A&P Parking Lots, or Learning from Las Vegas later revised in 1977 as Learning from Las Vegas: the Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form using the student work as a foil for new theory. This second manifesto was an even more stinging rebuke to orthodox modernism and elite architectural tastes. The book coined the terms "Duck" and "Decorated Shed"--descriptions of the two predominant ways of embodying iconography in buildings. The work of Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown adopted the latter strategy, producing formally simple "decorated sheds" with rich, complex and often shocking ornamental flourishes. Though he and his wife co-authored several additional books at the end of the century, these two have proved most influential.
Venturi created the firm Venturi and Short with William Short in 1960. John Rauch replaced Short as partner in 1964, changing the name to Venturi and Rauch. Venturi and Denise Scott Brown were married on July 23, 1967 in Santa Monica, California, and Scott Brown joined the firm as partner in charge of planning in 1969. The firm became known as Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown in 1980, and, finally, after Rauch's resignation in 1989, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates. The firm, based in Philadelphia, was awarded the Architecture Firm Award by the American Institute of Architects in 1985. Recent work has included many commissions from academic institutions, including campus planning and university buildings, and civic buildings in London, Toulouse and Japan.
Venturi is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, the American Institute of Architects, The American Academy of Arts and Letters and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
Undergraduate Science Building, Life Sciences Institute and Palmer Commons complex, University of Michigan; Ann Arbor, Michigan (2005)
Biomedical Biological Science Research Building (BBSRB), University of Kentucky; Lexington, Kentucky (2005)
Baker/Berry Library, Dartmouth College; Hanover, New Hampshire (2002)
Frist Campus Center, Princeton University; New Jersey (2000)
Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College; Hanover, New Hampshire (2000)
Perelman Quadrangle, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia (2000)
Provincial Capitol Building; Toulouse, France (1999)
Gonda (Goldschmied) Neurosciences and Genetics Research Center, UCLA; Los Angeles, California (1998)
Mielparque Nikko Kirifuri Resort; Nikko National Park, Japan (1997)
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; San Diego, California (1996)
Charles P. Stevenson, Jr. Library, Bard College; Annondale-on-Hudson, New York (1994)
Children's Museum; Houston, Texas (1992)
Gordon and Virginia MacDonald Medical Research Laboratories, UCLA; Los Angeles, California (1991)
Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery, London; United Kingdom (1991)
Seattle Art Museum; Seattle, Washington (1991)
Restoration of the Fisher Fine Arts Library, University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia (1991)
House in East Hampton, Long Island, New York (1990)
Lewis Thomas Laboratory, Princeton University, New Jersey (1986)
Gordon Wu Hall; Princeton University, New Jersey (1983)
House in New Castle, Delaware (1983)
Coxe-Hayden House and Studio; Block Island, Rhode Island (1981)
Best Products Catalog Showroom; Langhorne, Pennsylvania (1978)
Allen Memorial Art Museum modern addition, Oberlin College; Oberlin, Ohio (1976)
BASCO Showroom; Philadelphia (1976)
Franklin Court; Philadelphia (1976)
Dixwell Fire Station, New Haven, CT (1974)
Brant House; Greenwich, Connecticut (1972)
Trubek and Wislocki Houses; Nantucket, Massachusetts (1971)
Fire Station #4; Columbus, Indiana (1968)
Vanna Venturi House; Philadelphia (1964)
Guild House; Philadelphia (1964)
Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, interior renovation (The James B. Duke House); New York (1958)
Other works
The Vanna Venturi House in Philadelphia's Chestnut Hill neighborhood, designed for Venturi's mother, was recognized as a "Masterwork of Modern American Architecture" by the United States Postal Service in May 2005.
The Lieb House located in Barnegat Light, New Jersey was designed by Venturi and his wife Denise Scott Brown and built in 1967. It is best known for the huge number 9 on its front, and the sailboat-shaped window on one side. A Long Island, New York couple purchased this home in early March 2009 for just $1 to save it from demolition, paying at least $100,000 to move it on a barge to Glen Cove, Long Island.
