“NON SEQUITUR” AND “DUALITY” IN

ARCHITECTURE
VANNA VENTURI HOUSE

NAME-KAVYA SHARMA
CLASS-2/C
ROLL NO.-180BARCH037
“Robert Venturi's Vanna House broke the rules of architecture through
experimentation with complexity, ambiguity, and contradiction.”
From the book, "Geometry of Design" by Kimberly Elam, Princeton
Architectural Press

In 1962, Mrs. Vanna Venturi instructed her son, the young and promising
architect, Robert Venturi, the project of a house in Chestnut Hill (Philadelphia).
This house, although one of his earliest works, is complex and contradictory in
both formal and functional aspects and soon became a platform from which
Venturi achieved international recognition.

Source- https://www.dezeen.com/2015/08/12/postmodernism-architecture-vanna-venturi-
house-philadelphia-robert-venturi-denise-scott-brown/
Robert Venturi’s seminal book of Complexity and Contradiction in
Architecture, 1966 had already set a theoretical agenda for a post-modern
architecture. He opens the book with what he calls a general manifesto "I like
elements which are hybrid rather than 'pure,' compromising rather than 'clean,'
distorted rather than 'straightforward,' ambiguous rather than 'articulated,'
perverse as well as impersonal, boring as well as 'interesting,' conventional
rather than 'designed,' accommodating rather than excluding, redundant rather
than simple, vestigial as well as innovating, inconsistent and equivocal rather
than direct and clear. I am for messy vitality over obvious unity. I include the
non sequitur and proclaim the duality.” The dualities which Venturi describes
and which run through much post-modern work are as he describes them, the
dualities of the non sequitur and the contradictory. Contradiction is what
Venturi chooses to celebrate: it is what he builds his theory upon.
At the time of both the house and the book the teaching and practice of
architecture were dominated by Modernism. Venturi, rather than accepting the
prevailing orthodoxies of Mies van der Rohe and of Louis Kahn), in favour of
complexity and contradiction, which he argued made products of architecture
more witty and less boring; more appropriate (poetic) reflections of the
complexities.

Source-https://en.wikiarquitectura.com/building/vanna-venturi-house/
Mies van der Rohe and of Louis Kahn), in favour of complexity and
contradiction, which he argued made products of architecture more witty and
less boring; more appropriate (poetic) reflections of the complexities
At first glance the house appears to be a collage of diagonal lines, horizontals,
circles, arcs, squares, rectangles, and planes. A closer visual analysis reveals the
carefully composed interrelationships of each element of the facade.
The house has a uniform appearance, even simple and symmetrical. However,
between that appearance and compositional center sets a series of changes,
geometric changes and unexpected routes. His unit concept is not, after all, an
instrument of historicism, but, as he said, understanding of the silhouette as a
whole.
It represents in simplified form the image of home that we have in memory.
Robert Venturi used to say: “The House… is Home”. The same urban rescues
Popular Culture, because the volume of the house, playing a popularly accepted
model home.
The five room house stands only about 30 feet (9 m) tall at the top of the
chimney, but has a monumental front façade. A non-structural appliqué arch
and "hole in the wall" windows, among other elements, were challenge to
modernist orthodoxy. The house is designed around a chimney that is
centralised and goes all the way to the top of the house. Externally, the house is
built symmetrical. Venturi has distorted this idea of symmetry. There is also a
basement underneath the house that is often not uncovered by people.
The basic elements of the house are a reaction against standard modernist
architectural elements: - pitched roof rather than flat roof, emphasis on central
hearth & chimney, closed ground floor "set firmly on ground" rather than
modernist columns & glass walls which open up the ground floor. On the front
elevation the broken pediment or gable & a purely ornamental applique arch
reflect return to mannerist architecture and a rejection of modernism.
Source-https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid:48f7a7db-10d3-411f-8273-
1e2a78ecae37/datastream/OBJ

House is a composition of rectangular, curvilinear, and diagonal elements

coming together (or sometimes juxtaposing each other) in a way that inarguably
creates complexity and contradiction.

Source- https://www.behance.net/gallery/9902253/Robert-Venturis-Vanna-House-Geometric-
Analysis

In order to create more contradiction and complexity, Venturi experimented

with scale. Inside the house certain elements are “too big,” such as the size of
the fireplace and the height of the mantel compared to the size of the room.
Doors are wide and low in height, especially in contrast to the grandness of the
entrance space. Venturi also minimized circulation space in the design of the
house, so that it consisted of large distinct rooms with minimum subdivisions
between them.
"Some have said my mother's house looks like a child's drawing of a house –
representing the fundamental aspects of shelter – gable roof, chimney, door and
windows," wrote Venturi in Architectural Record in 1982. "I like to think this is
so."
Source- https://www.northernarchitecture.us/analysing-architecture/case-study-fourvanna-
venturi-house.html

However, these traditional elements were applied in unconventional ways.

Firstly, the gable has a vertical opening in its centre, and is located on the long
rather than the short side of the building, completely distorting its scale. There
is also no matching gable at the back – the element is purely decorative.
Some of the non sequiturs in the house include a staircase that leads to nowhere
and a deceptively simple façade that hides the real structural elements within. If
it sounds like this house is a mess, it isn’t: Miraculously, it manages to combine
simplicity and complexity in a way that leads to true beauty.
Venturi's roof is complex: there are slopes in three different directions; it doesn't
always reach the walls that 'should be' its support. (This happens over the
entrance, and at the 'ingrown' balcony outside the upstairs bedroom, and
reinforces the sense that these very two-dimensional walls are 'masks', screening
rather than expressing the inside—another counter to the Modernist suggestion
that barriers between inside and outside should be broken down.)
Venturi's contradiction of orthodoxy informs his plan too. In his own
explanation of the house in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture,
Venturi describes his plan as deriving from, but a distortion of, 'Palladian
rigidity and symmetry'.

Source-Robert Venturi-Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

According to Robert Venturi-“This building recognizes complexities and

contradictions: it is both complex and simple, open and closed, big and little;
some of its elements are good on one level and bad on another; its order
accommodates the generic elements of the house in general, and the
circumstantial elements of a house in particular. It achieves the difficult unity of
a medium number of diverse parts rather than the easy unity of few or many
motival parts.”
“I am for messy vitality over obvious unity,” a very contemporary-sounding
passage in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture reads. “I include the
non sequitur and proclaim the duality. I am for richness of meaning rather than
clarity of meaning.”
Source- https://en.wikiarquitectura.com/building/vanna-venturi-house/

Venturi may have said, “Don’t trust an architect who’s trying to start a
movement,” but that’s exactly what he did. The home stands as a testament to
the woman who raised her son to be a brilliant, iconoclastic artist.

References:
https://www.northernarchitecture.us/analysing-architecture/case-study-fourvanna-venturi-
house.html
https://www.dezeen.com/2015/08/12/postmodernism-architecture-vanna-venturi-house-
philadelphia-robert-venturi-denise-scott-brown/
https://en.wikiarquitectura.com/building/vanna-venturi-house/