“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)

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Robert Venturi12

American architect 1925–2018

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“Gold is now money with reference to all other commodities only because it was previously, with reference to them, a simple commodity.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

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(Buch I) (1867)

“Often, the program ends up amazing. You'll say, "This is beautifully architected." Well, where did that architecture come from?
In this case, architecture means the systematic way we deal with diverse requirements. Architecture allows us, when we go to do work we need to do on the program, to find where things go. It is a system that was worked into the program by all the little decisions we made — little decisions that were right, and little decisions that were wrong and corrected. In a sense we get the architecture without really trying. All the decisions in the context of the other decisions simply gel into an architecture.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

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“The second difficulty inherent in the contradictory character of the commodity is this: a commodity must have use value, but not for its owner, for if it had, it would cease to be a commodity.”

Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005) British economist

Source: A History of Economic Thought (1939), Chapter VI, Marx, p. 266

“I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, Why Socialism? (1949)

“Architecture differs from a work of art, which can be displayed in different settings and the subject-matter, form and meaning will remain unchanged. The physicality of any built structure can be altered over time as additions and alterations are made. Moreover, a building or work of architecture can change its function as it meets the different demands of its occupants, although its exterior appearance may be unaltered. And its meaning may change depending on the nature of the context. This reveals some of the problems of interpreting historic architecture from a modern-day perspective as the physical changes and different cultural contexts transform the object.”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 1 : Reading the past : What is architectural history?

“The calculated ambiguity of expression is based on the confusion of experience as reflected in the architectural program.”

Robert Venturi book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

3. Ambiguity
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966)

“Spirituality is not necessarily exclusive; it can be and in its fullness must be all-inclusive.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Renaissance in India (1918)
Context: Spirituality is not necessarily exclusive; it can be and in its fullness must be all-inclusive.
But still there is a great difference between the spiritual and the purely material and mental view of existence. The spiritual view holds that the mind, life, body are man's means and not his aims and even that they are not his last and highest means; it sees them as his outer instrumental self and not his whole being. It sees the infinite behind all things finite and it adjudges the value of the finite by higher infinite values of which they are the imperfect translation and towards which, to a truer expression of them, they are always trying to arrive. It sees a greater reality than the apparent not only behind man and the world, but within man and the world, and this soul, self, divine thing in man it holds to be that in him which is of the highest importance, that which everything else in him must try in whatever way to bring out and express, and this soul, self, divine presence in the world it holds to be that which man has ever to try to see and recognise through all appearances, to unite his thought and life with it and in it to find his unity with his fellows. This alters necessarily our whole normal view of things; even in preserving all the aims of human life, it will give them a different sense and direction.

“Although the behavior that emerges is complex, the rules that guide it are necessarily simple. In fact, it is their simplicity that creates the freedom to behave in complicated adaptive, and surprising ways.”

Shona Brown (1960) businessperson

Source: Competing on the Edge, 1998, p. 18

“Architecture was my way of expressing my ideals: to be simple, to create a world equal to everyone, to look at people with optimism, that everyone has a gift. I don’t want anything but general happiness. Why is that bad?”

Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012) Brazilian architect

Quoted in "Why Oscar Niemeyer is king of curves", Tom Dyckhoff, The Times Online (London, 2007-12-12).

“‘Architecture’ may at first appear to be a more fixed and finite term. It has a threedimensional, tangible, useable form. But questions remain about what can be considered architecture and what cannot, and by this I mean that we usually understand architecture to incorporate aesthetic as well as functional consideration into its structure. Anything that does not fall into this category can be described as ‘just a building’. This may seem too simple. Can architecture be determined solely by the use of refined architectural style – high or polite architecture instead of vernacular?”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 1 : Reading the past : What is architectural history?

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