Robert Venturi: Complexity

Robert Venturi was American architect. Explore interesting quotes on complexity.
Robert Venturi: 24   quotes 0   likes

“But architecture is necessarily complex and contradictory in its very inclusion of the traditional Vitruvian elements of commodity, firmness, and delight. And today the wants of program, structure, mechanical equipment, and expression, even in single buildings in simple contexts, are diverse and conflicting in ways previously unimaginable.”

Robert Venturi book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

1. Nonstraightfoward Architecture: A Gentle Manifesto
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966)

Way

“Orthodox Modern architects have tended to recognize complexity insufficiently or inconsistently. In their attempt to break with tradition and start all over again, they idealized the primitive and elementary at the expense of the diverse and the sophisticated.”

Robert Venturi book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

2. Complexity and Contradiction vs. Simplification or Picturesqueness
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966)

“Nor does complexity deny the valid simplification which is part of the process of analysis, and even a method of achieving complex architecture itself.”

Robert Venturi book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

2. Complexity and Contradiction vs. Simplification or Picturesqueness
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966)

Parting

“The double meanings inherent in the phenomenon both-and can involve metamorphosis as well as contradiction. I have described how the omni-directional spire of the tower of Christ Church, Spitalfields, evolves into a directional pavilion at its base, but a perceptual rather than a formal kind of change in meaning is possible. In equivocal relationships one contradictory meaning usually dominates another, but in complex compositions the relationship is not always constant. This is especially true as the observer moves through or around a building, and by extension through a city: at one moment one meaning can be perceived as dominant; at another moment a different meaning seems paramount.”

Robert Venturi book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

4. Contradictory Levels: The Phenomenon of "Both-And" in Architecture
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966)

Change , Christ

“I like complexity and contradiction in architecture. I do not like the incoherence or arbitrariness of incompetent architecture nor the precious intricacies of picturesqueness or expressionism.”

Robert Venturi book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

1. Nonstraightfoward Architecture: A Gentle Manifesto
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966)