Iconography and electronics upon a generic architecture : a view from the drafting room / Robert Venturi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Venturi, Robert.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Architecture, Modern--20th century.

Architecture, Modern.

Physical Description:

374 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, [1996]

Summary:

"Robert Venturi's 'Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture' and 'Learning from Las Vegas' (the latter coauthored with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour) are among the most influential books by any architect of our era - the one celebrating complexity in architecture, the other the uses of symbolism in commercial and vernacular architecture and signage. This new collection of writings in a variety of genres argues for a generic architecture defined by iconography and electronics, an architecture whose elemental qualities become shelter and symbol. Venturi, who along with his partner, Denise Scott Brown, made the vulgar acceptable and found virtue in the commercial, the kitsch, and the ordinary, is respected equally as a theorist and an architect who communicates his architectural ideas, formal and verbal, with grace and wit. These essays, letters, reports, lectures, manifestos, and polemical texts offer a candid, uncensored view from the drafting room, commonsense responses urgent and diverse, of a busy architect, in part a reaction against the conceptualizing of architecture today invaded by other disciplines and made obscure. Seven of the essays were coauthored with Denise Scott Brown. The voice is personal, eloquent in expounding on the unglamorous side of practice; sometimes vituperative and corrective in addressing clients, theoreticians, and critics; often amusing and humorous in looking back on past projects and opportunities; instructive in describing early influences and tasts; and reflective in assessing his own impact on the profession. The lead essays can be described as an argument embracing reference and representation in our information age, whose technical basis is truly of our time and whose iconographic basis derives from a long tradition in architecture including hieroglyphic Egyptian pylons, early Christian basilicas, scenographic Baroque interiors, and even eclectic Romantic architecture and twentieth-century electronic signs and dis plays. The essays include Venturi's 1950 M.F.A. thesis, published here for the first time - a work that foreshadows many of the themes that were later to make him a controversial and ground-breaking architect and writer - and a series of vintage Venturi aphorisms"--Back cover.

Contents:

Sweet and Sour

A Not So Gentle Manifesto

Homage to Vincent Scully and His Shingle Style, with Reminiscences and Some Outcomes

Donald Drew Egbert

A Tribute

Notes for a Lecture Celebrating the Centennial of the American Academy in Rome Delivered in Chicago

Adorable Discoveries When I Was a Semi-Naive Fellow at the American Academy in Rome That I Never Forget

Armando Brasini Revisited

Furness and Taste

Frank Lloyd Wright Essay for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Words on the Guggenheim Museum in Response to a Request by Thomas Krens

For an Anniversary of the Bauhaus, 1994

Learning from Aalto

A Protest Concerning the Extension of the Salk Center / Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

Thoughts about Evolving Teachers and Students

Louis Kahn Remembered: Notes from a Lecture at the Opening of the Kahn Exhibition in Japan, January 1993

Essay Derived from the Acceptance Speech, the Madison Medal, Princeton University

Robert Venturi's Response at the Pritzker Prize Award Ceremony at the Palacio de Iturbide, Mexico City, May 16, 1991

Episcopal Academy Fiftieth Class Reunion Statement

Two Naifs in Japan / Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

"Venturi Shops"

Las Vegas after Its Classic Age / Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

Some Agonized Thoughts about Maintenance and Preservation Concerning Humble Buildings of the Recent Past

Guild House, Twenty-Five Years Later

Thoughts of Fire Station No. 4 Twenty-Five Years Later

Speech for the Conference "Interiors for Historic Buildings"

The Preservation Game at Penn: An Emotional Response

A Series of Responses for Via, the Journal of the School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania

Personal Approaches and Positions toward Contemporary Architectural Practice / Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

Letter Sent to Several Architect Selection Committees Concerning Competitions, Drafted Members of the Office of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates

Answer to Charles K. Hoyt, Editor, Architectural Record, Regarding Competitions

The Overwhelming of the Architect: What It Takes to Be an Architect in the Nineties: A Modest Tirade Mainly for Myself

Letter to Friends about to Visit the Sainbury Wing

The Hall and the Avenue / Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

Toward a Scenographic Architecture for Today: Generic Form with Ordinary-Extraordinary Signs: A Description of the Kirifuri Resort Project in Nikko / Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

Imagery via Lighting and Electronics for Loker Commons, Memorial Hall, Harvard University

Whitehall Ferry Terminal

Plus Ca Change ... Encore

A Somewhat Intemperate Response to Current Criticism of the Whitehall Ferry Design

Thoughts on the Architecture of the Scientific Workplace Community, Change, and Continuity

From Invention to Convention in Architecture

Note on the Beloved Princeton Campus as a Basis for a Proposed Planning Study

More Thoughts on Context and Function: The American Campus in the American Town

General Thoughts Concerning Designing for Architecture on American Campuses

Being Repulsive: As I Travel I See Elements of Buildings from My Hotel Window That Originated in My/Our Work and Have Been Exploited All Over

Windows

c. '65

Architecture as Elemental Shelter, the City as Valid Decon / Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

Window vs. Trend: The Current Academization of American Architectural Education

The Vision Thing: Why It Sucks

"Ceci Tuera Cela" Is Now "Cela Est Devenu Ceci": Some Thoughts Concerning Architecture and Media

Letter to the Editor of the Architectural Review, February 17, 1987

Letter to R. Craig Miller, Curator of the Department of Design and Architecture at the Denver Art Museum

Letter Not Sent to an Architecture Critic

J'Adore St. Paul's

Mals Mots: Aphorisms

Sweet and Sour

by an Anti-Hero Architect

Introduction to My M.F.A. Thesis

Contest in Architectural Composition: M.F.A. Thesis, Princeton University.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

0262220512

9780262220514

0262720299

9780262720298

OCLC:

33443429