Ornament, Scale & Ambiguity

Ornament, Scale & Ambiguity | Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown | Pidgeon Digital 14/05/20, 16:24
HOME ABOUT EXPLORE SUBSCRIBE FAQ CONTACT
Ornament, Scale & Ambiguity

Robert Venturi (Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates) & Denise Scott Brown (Venturi, Scott Brown &
Associates)
1
ROBERT VENTURI & DENISE SCOTT BROWN
©Monica Pidgeon
https://www-pidgeondigital-com.proxy-auth3.iuav.it/talks/ornament-scale-ambiguity/chapters/ Pagina 1 di 26
RV: Denise and I have spoken before of the 'decorated shed'. Our feeling that an
appropriate building form for now is one where the form and the spatial quality of a
building are very simple and very direct, very conventional, and where the aesthetic
excitement comes from the ornament on the building, the pattern of the building ,
rather than the shape of the building and the structural articulation of the building.
This allows for buildings that can be quite conventional in their methods of
construction, that can be therefore standardised, that can be economical and their
buildings no longer depend on their architectural excitement, as I said, deriving from
fancy sculptural articulation. DSB: The work that we're interested in now and
working on now, a lot of it contains pattern, and this came out of our earlier studies in
symbolism and representation, and these ideas have been accepted by many people,
and we see work not too different from what we would have done in many places
that we visit, which is a change for us, a slightly hair raising change. But pattern as a
device has not been generally taken up. We seem to remain one of the few firms that
investigates the use of pattern in different ways and at different scales.
2
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY LABORATORY, PRINCETON
UNIVERSITY
©Venturi, Rauch & Scott Brown
RV: The Molecular Biology Laboratory building at Princeton University is the project
that is interesting us the most at the moment and that we're in the middle of. It's the
biggest building we've ever designed. It's interesting because we're the architects
responsible for the exterior design of the building. Payette and Associates of Boston,
who are experts in research laboratories, are responsible for the interior of the
building. We are very happy about this building also because it's the fourth or fifth or
sixth project that we've received from Princeton University, so they obviously like
the work we've done before. It's one of the most difficult projects we've ever had
because, the way we've designed it, its architectural expression depends very much
on pattern, on exterior pattern, and pattern is something that we have been
advocating for a long time. On the other hand, pattern is very, very difficult to do. It's
something none of us architects have any practice in, something that was thrown
away at the beginning of this century, that element of architecture. And the pattern
on this building is the thing which is giving it a great deal of its quality. It's especially
interesting too because the interior requirements of the building require that it be
very big, very long and essentially have a very boring shape, if not an awkward shape.
The shape turns out to be almost that of a shoebox and the design requirements for
flexibility inside demand that the building be rather severe on the outside. So we
have had to, as it were, camouflage the awkwardness of the shape by the appliqué of
different patterns.
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY LABORATORY, PRINCETON

UNIVERSITY
RV: The part of the campus that this building is on is one where the buildings are
mostly brick, where the buildings which were built at the turn of the century were a
kind of English Elizabethan style of architecture, and so we have gone back to a kind
of Elizabethan diaper pattern and checkerboard pattern, combinations of patterns
that were juxtaposed somewhat like what Americans call a patchwork quilt where
individual pieces of fabric with different patterns were joined in kind of arbitrary
ways. This building is one where we have also caressed, as it were, the surface, every
inch of it by being extremely careful about the details, because, since we cannot
depend on shadows and articulations involving depth to distract the eye, we have to
be exceedingly careful about detailing.
GUILDHOUSE APARTMENTS FOR THE ELDERLY,

PHILADELPHIA
RV: It's very interesting, maybe the first time we used flat pattern was in our building
called Guildhouse which was an apartment house for the elderly, built in Philadelphia
for the Society of Friends. I think its construction date is 1964. And in that building
we use one white stripe of brick near the top, and a kind of base of white brick
pattern at the bottom. At the time that was extremely daring and it took lots of
courage to do that. Actually the courage did not involve my worrying so much what
other people think but what I would think. And I now see stripes beginning to appear
everywhere, and I say to myself "our stripe must look so timid and inadequate now".
But if the young people knew it they would realise how bold that stripe was in the
context of its time. Some architects have said "Aren't you sorry that in the Molecular
Biology Building in Princeton, you're responsible only for the exterior design?" That
does not bother us, it's not inappropriate in a building like this where there really is a
kind of separation of the inside and the outside. And there is a tradition that exists;
you take the Place Vendôme in Paris which is essentially a facade, behind which is the
Ritz Hotel, different apartment houses and so forth, all behind the same kind of
facade. Actually, this facade does reflect very explicitly what's going on inside. The
inside requirements are very demanding. The dimensions of the bays were
important, and from those demands we were able to combine with the pattern in this
building, we were able to combine variations in rhythm. So the front facade of the
building is rather contrapuntal where different rhythms and different patterns
juxtapose themselves in different ways. It is interesting that our problems as
architects now are not so much the acceptance of our design but sometimes the
acceptance of ourselves as conventional architects. Because of our ideas in the early
years we got the reputation for being controversial. We're now in a position where
we should not be considered controversial since what we have advocated is being
done in the architectural community, but it is very funny that the reputation hangs
on.
STATE MOSQUE FOR IRAQ. COMPETITION ENTRY.

ELEVATION
RV: Another project where pattern is important, and where the power of the design
derives more from combinations of ordinary elements and from patterns themselves
rather than from dramatic complex spaces, is our design for a State Mosque for Iraq.
This Mosque project is an invited competition where seven competitors, four Middle
Eastern architects and one American, ourselves, one European architect and a
Japanese architect were invited to design such a building for the Government of
Iraq. This building, if it were to be built, would certainly be one of the biggest
buildings in the world. It is to contain at one time thirty thousand worshippers. In this
design we decided to base the form of the building on the earliest Arabic form of
Mosque, the hypostyle hall mosque which originated in Baghdad, or near Baghdad,
and which you can now see examples of in Northern Africa, in Cairo and in Cordoba.
It is a mosque containing a vast room with many, many columns, and distinguished by
bays that are all identical. It is a kind of interior space that is very rare in European
monumental architecture because it contains no hierarchy of space. All of the
individual spaces within the building, all of the bays are essentially identical. There's
no crescendo of spatial quality toward the centre or toward the end, and that way it
is a kind of boring space but it is also a very moving space, and it's a space where
every individual wherever he is and generally they are men in a mosque where every
individual is in a kind of equal position in relation to every other one. I first saw
mosques of this sort in Cairo about twenty five years ago. They were extremely
moving kind of interiors to me, where the light filters through in these kind of infinite
spaces, these infinite forests of columns. So it was very thrilling to have the
opportunity to base our building on this prototype. It was appropriate also because it
is kind of the equivalent of the Doric Order, if you will, in Muslim architecture; it is an
early kind of architectural vocabulary in the evolution of Muslim architecture.
Another quality of Mosque of this period is that they involve a series of enclosed
spaces, layers of spaces if you will, and that is another quality which we exploited in
the design of this mosque.

TOP: DOME ELEVATION; BOTTOM: MAIN LEVEL
PLAN
RV: It is true that the hypostyle form of mosque that originated in Samarra and other
locations in Iraq, it is true that this mosque had no dome, or it had relatively small
domes. We decided that a modern mosque today, if it were to be popular as well as
fine art, should contain a dome, because a dome is identified with the mosque all over
the world. So we created a dome which we placed over the great court of the
mosque. This dome is much bigger than Michelangelo's dome, it would be extremely
big, it would be a dome that reflects the great tradition of muqarnas, of series of
niches which is universal in Muslim architecture and, in our case, is expressed on the
outside which would have been almost unique in Muslim architecture. Another
quality of this mosque is that it contains a combination of very big scale and very
little scale we think that most great monumental architecture has this quality of
combining big scale and little scale and excluding medium scale, if you will. The big
scale is the scale which is universal and communal and which makes it monumental in
a sense, but the small scale is one that the individual can identify with, can see close
up, and makes the building human if you will in scale as well as big, or individual as
well as communal. In this complex, as you will see, we have combined also small scale
architecture with big scale architecture, as manifested in the auxiliary buildings, the
school and the living quarters that connect with it. So we have a kind of small scale
village that is juxtaposed upon the big building. Another characteristic of course is
the reliance on ornament, on explicit ornament as seen in the crenellations and the
patterns where again there are combinations of collages of patterns that are
juxtaposed and of rhythms which, like a fugue in music, overlap and make for richness
of effect.

NORTH ELEVATION
RV: The material of the mosque is buff-coloured brick which is the traditional
material of Iraq. It's the material that Babylon was built out of; it's the material that
the great mosques which are now in ruin, during the great period of Baghdad
civilisation are built of. At the same time this was combined with precast concrete
forms, rather pinkish in colour, so that there comes a kind of play of pink and tan and
mustard colours in the make-up of the building outside.

TOP: DETAIL OF INTERIOR ARCHES & THE
MIHRAB; BOTTOM: INTERIOR PERSPECTIVE
TOWARDS QIBLA
RV: It is important also to mention the structure of the interior of the great hall. The
original structure of the hypostyle hall was one where many, many columns created
many bays and supported arches which supported the roof. In our mosque we have
kept the form of the arches but they have become almost pendant forms of arches
and we have deleted many of the columns so that we have created very, very big
spans as you will see in the sections and plans. In this way we greatly increased the
site lines and the opportunity to see the qibla wall, and at the same time we did show
off somewhat modern technology. We relied for the structural design on the firm of
Ove Arup in London who designed in this preliminary design stage the great
vierendeel trusses which span the interior. And they designed as well, again up to a
preliminary degree, the dome which is a double dome made of niches which are
called muqarnas.

MODEL OF THE MOSQUE & AUXILIARY BUILDINGS
RV: Another challenge in the design of this mosque involved the symbolism of
mosque, and we felt we were faced with a problem somewhat like that of
Michelangelo's when he designed St. Peter's, in the sense that he had to design an
extremely big structure for an important religious building. And what he chose to do
was to take the conventional form with conventional proportions of a domed
Renaissance church and blow them up into grand size. But the proportions were the
same. He did not, for instance, in order to make his building big, say 'I will have twice
as many bays as the average church'. He said 'I will have the same number of bays but
I will just make them bigger'. Now Michelangelo has been criticised for this in the
sense that many people think that the architectural expression of the Basilica of St.
Peter's is inhumanly big. But I don't agree with people who say that, because he did
something else besides blow up the size of the church and keep the conventional
proportions. He did something else. What he did was he added very small detail
along with the big forms. So that you as an individual, when you go up close to the
building, are satisfied, you're not overwhelmed at that scale. He again combined big
scale and little scale. And what he did therefore was maintain the symbolic integrity
of the building. You recognise this is as a conventional church with all the richness of
associations that come from something that is familiar. So that it is familiar in one
way and unfamiliar in another way. We did the same thing in the sense that we kept
the same proportions of the traditional hypostyle hall and blew them up into a bigger
scale and we therefore made this building unusually big but not unusual in its
appearance and its symbolism and its associations.
10
TOP: FURNITURE FOR KROLL INTERNATIONAL;

BOTTOM: TEA & COFFEE SET FOR ALESSI, MILAN
RV: I've been describing big projects that are in our office at this time, which are
exciting us very much as designers. But of course we are known for doing small
buildings as well, small designs as well, we're doing houses and we are currently
designing furniture for Knoll International and we are currently designing tea and
coffee set for Alessi in Italy. That combination of objects include a tray, a coffee pot, a
teapot, a cream pitcher, and a sugar bowl. And there we are also making references
to conventional forms, to historical styles. The teapot is Queen Anne, the coffee pot
is Rococo, the sugar bowl is classical/late eighteenth century if you will, the cream
pitcher is kind of Liberty/Art Nouveau/Arts and Crafts style. And these are all of
course not literal but, purposely, representations of these styles. We try to get at the
essence of these styles. We also, in the designs of these forms, rely on pattern, on the
appliqué of pattern to add a dimension to the design. But most important is the fact
that they become an eclectic composition, a composition of objects that vary in their
symbolism but somehow hold together in their forms and in the consistency of the
material that they're made of. I might add that the tray represents the pattern of the
Piazza Campidoglio by Michelangelo, so that just makes it all the more disunified in a
sense, and I think we enjoy very much this quality. The Curator of the Philadelphia
Museum of Art mentioned to me that combining periods and ensembles of this sort
was very typical of the 18th Century that people would buy, one generation would
buy a coffee pot and the next generation would buy the cream pitcher, and that each
would acquire them in the form and the style that was contemporary when they
were purchased. I realise that we were not being that unusually eclectic, as it is. But it
is true that we enjoy these jumps in scale from hypostyle whole a great mosque,
great university building to teapot that we do find that the urban design work we do
in our office is very satisfying and very important to us.
11
LEFT: TEAPOT FOR ALESSI, MILAN; RIGHT:

WESTWAY, PHILADELPHIA. MODEL
DSB: I remember in the 60s, in the height of the social planning movement, one of
the social planners at Penn saying "any architect who thinks he or she can design
everything from a teaspoon to a region has delusions of grandeur. And I perfectly
well agree with my friend Paul Davidoff when he says that. So I am bemused and
puzzled to find us doing just that, everything from a teapot to Westway. And it makes
for a very fascinating professional life to have that span. I claim no delusions of
grandeur. I think we know where to get off in all these fields. We know that we are
not the craftsmen who make the teapot, and we defer very much and are thrilled to
work with their skills. In the same way I'm no transportation engineer and I know
very well when to bring one in in an urban design project. So that I think that's part of
the way of avoiding thinking that architects can design everything in the world, to
know where you must stop and where you must relate to other people. This span is
not only geographical or, say, spatial, it isn't only between teaspoon and region, it's in
subject matter as well. You'll hear Bob talking about history of architecture and
history of iconography, and I've just now mentioned transportation planning. I could
as well have talked about working with sociologists or sociological insights or cultural
analysis as part of the span of what we do. And I would claim that in a way this
differentiates us again from our colleagues. We've talked about being differentiated
through the use of pattern but the differences go deeper. I don't believe that we are
Post Modernists although I think we had a great deal to do with the start of that
movement. One of the reasons we're not, is this question of academic or discipline
range, range of subject matter that we will bring into consideration, be it in the
design of a teaspoon, a house, a college building, or a city. And I believe that this
range is rather unusual.
12
AUSTIN, TEXAS. LEFT: AERIAL VIEW; RIGHT:

SOUTH WEST SECTOR OF DOWNTOWN, URBAN
STRATEGY
DSB: In the work we're doing for Austin, Texas, we have been asked to help a
development company, the Watson Casey Companies, discuss and determine the
future of the south west sector of the downtown in Austin. And if one looks at an
aerial view of Austin, it's almost as if the new tall buildings are stalking across the
city, headed south west and down toward the lake. And in what was a quiet pocket of
warehouse district, we're now seeing projected growth of new office buildings and a
new city hall and various other ideas. The developers knew very well that there was
going to be growth, and we have worked with a firm of economists, Halcyon is the
name of the firm and they are very well known in America for the design of retail
space. So that if you have a large office building and its ground floor is an extremely
big area, they are recognised authorities on the design of retail uses on that ground
floor related to malls and arcades on the inside. And there's been considerable
building of this sort in New York and in other cities, until people have started to
realise that the streets are becoming very dead because all the life and vitality is
looking in on the mall on the inside.
13
AUSTIN, TEXAS. REPUBLIC SQUARE DISTRICT.

TOP: INDICATIVE SITE PLAN; BOTTOM: THE
PUBLIC REALM
DSB: Now Halcyon have designed malls and have designed mixed use retail and
office projects as economists, working with architects. They and we together were
given the mandate to try now to design a district that was going to be primarily for
office and retail use but not only, and to keep vitality on the streets at the same time
as we maintained retail vitality underneath the office building. This is being quite a
challenge to work out the arrangements of blocks that would maintain people
walking on the sidewalks and not only people walking down the middles and arcades.
Also the developer has felt that in order to maintain a district and not only a
development, and to maintain it in the long run, you would have a different economic
calculus from the one if you were merely talking about return on one building, and in
the next ten years. If you were talking about eighteen to twenty five blocks and you
were talking about a city that's going to last for hundreds of years, other means are
needed to maintain its vitality and its economic vitality.
14
AUSTIN, TEXAS. MUSEUM

DSB: Therefore he is giving land for a museum within the project, and he is donating
that land and we are to be the designers of the museum. The museum will be mixed
in with a host of other uses on one Austin downtown block. It'll be mixed with a video
production studio and teleconferencing facilities, maybe with penthouse apartments,
maybe with office uses as well, and also with retail uses and possibly a hotel. This will
be a very mixed up block, a very exciting block, and in a way that'll be a flagship for
the rest of the project. So this is the mandate to us: help tie this whole area into the
rest of the activities of the city to keep it vital, think of how pedestrians will move
through it and use it, think of it as a twenty four hour a-day and all season area, and
how can you help us build the life of this kind of an area? The early flagship for this
whole district will then be the Laguna Gloria Art Museum, its downtown branch
opposite Republic Square.
15
AUSTIN, TEXAS. LA RAMBLA

DSB: The next stage of development will involve removing of a railroad track, an old
goods line track that served the warehouse district, and putting in its place
something that we have called The Rambla. Now you probably know of Las Ramblas
in Barcelona. That I believe is three, that's why it's in the plural. This being only about
seven blocks long, we are calling one Rambla. Being an American one, we say The
Rambla not La Rambla. And also we think that, given the Hispanic traditions of Austin
and that area of Texas in general, a mixed Anglo and Spanish name would be a very
good idea. The Rambla, like its antecedent in Barcelona, will be a tree lined way. Now
what was suitable for, what in Italy they call La Passeggiata, the meeting and mating
ritual in evenings in a European city, is very suitable we believe for areas where there
are downtown office workers for a lunch hour walking place. So we think that our
Rambla will be a jostling, thriving place at lunch-time for all office workers will come
out of their office buildings, sit down under the trees on benches and watch other
office workers walk by. So we think that this will, of itself, make an identity for this
district. Not only will the Museum, but after that, this long tree-lined walk that runs
from the main street of Austin through to the c reek which is the boundary of the
central area. We think that this will be a lovely image for a hot Texan city.
16
HOUSES ON BLOCK ISLAND, RHODE ISLAND

RV: From Austin, Texas, to Block Island, Rhode Island, which is a New England setting
for one of the latest houses we have done. The challenge here was to do a small
vacation house, in this case, made up of two small buildings for a client to retreat to
on this island which was a very beautiful, barren, New England fishermen's island
with very humble kind of architectural tradition. What we did was we visited the
place and got to know it and we designed a building that is not historically or
archaeologically correct, if you will, but has some of the essence of the place we
think. As you can see, these buildings remind you of New England buildings. They
have some of the stark quality of eighteenth century and early nineteenth century
New England buildings. They are made of wood shingles. They have somewhat the
proportions of the humble form of Greek Revival architecture that was built in the
early part of the century in this place. I'm sure the builders, the original builders, had
never heard of Greek Revival but these buildings of the period that we were inspired
by have a kind of temple proportion as opposed to an eighteenth century manor-
house proportion which the farmhouses of New England had in the eighteenth
century. I think one of the important things about these two little buildings is that
they are indeed little buildings with big scale. And that has always interested us to
impart into a small building a sense of generosity and spaciousness. And so again we
combine real scale or small scale with big scale.
17
HOUSES ON BLOCK ISLAND, RHODE ISLAND

RV: The ordinary window on the western facade of this building is actually eight feet
high instead of four and a half or five feet high. That is a trick of scale if you will, but it
is a means for us to get this quality of the building being familiar and unusual at the
same time, of being old and new at the same time. Otherwise I think we can say that
the character of the building is very low key, it's a place where you can feel relaxed.
And the interior furnishings by Diane Boone carry on this idea because they are kind
of combinations of country furniture of different periods and from different places.
18
WU HALL , BUTLER COLLEGE, PRINCETON

UNIVERSITY. GENERAL VIEW
RV: I might refer to another project of ours at Princeton which has been completed
and that is Wu Hall, which is a dining and social facility for Butler College, a
residential college at Princeton University. And this was a particularly interesting
project because it's one that, to a great extent, had to be designed from the outside
in. By that I mean it was a building that, although it had a series of very important
interior functions, that of dining and social spaces, it had to be inserted into a
constricted site and had to be connected to an existing building so that the dining hall
in this building could share the kitchen of the building next door. The building also
had to act, in the site plan, to connect two disparate buildings that were now to be
combined as a new college: one dormitory building which is a kind of indifferent
1940s Jacobean-style building, and another one which is a Modern building built
about twenty years ago. So our building also acted as a kind of hyphen, a long
building that connected the two spatially and formally. As you approach it from the
top, you see it only very obliquely. You see the facade from an oblique angle.
19

UNIVERSITY. ORNAMENT OVER ENTRANCE
RV: It is also of brick, it also relied on pattern with historical associations, ornament
in that way that is also very flat. But this building as you can see does have some
sculptural articulation, it is a building which is seen in different ways from different
locations.
20

UNIVERSITY. VIEW FROM WEST
RV: As you approach it from the west, you see the building straight on, and the
building at this end takes on a bigger scale and greater height.
21

UNIVERSITY. VIEW FROM EAST
RV: As you approach it from the east, it terminates an axis and the bay window acts
to do that successfully. The historical style of the building connects with the
Princeton Gothic, or rather the Elizabethan, and it contains big scale elements in this
relatively small institutional building, the main big scale elements being the bay
windows as you can see.
22

UNIVERSITY. IDENTIFICATION COLUMN
RV: The other element I will mention is the column which is at the front of the
building and which acts as an obelisk does in an Italian piazza. It serves to identify a
space, in this case to kind of give a centre, a place of identity, of a feeling of centrality
to the college which is made up of these three disparate buildings. The column is
flattened out, it is a representation of a column, if you will, because it is a column that
is seen more from one direction than another so it's directional in its shape, it is also
flat because it acts somewhat as a sign or a banner. It is a representation of a column,
as I said, rather than a column itself. On the top of it is a particular shape which
represents a tiger which is a symbol of Princeton University.
23

UNIVERSITY. DINING HALL
RV: Wu Hall does have historical references outside and inside. Outside it reminds
you of an English Elizabethan building and therefore connects with the Elizabethan
Gothic tradition of architecture at Princeton of the early part of this century which
was very popular at this time again. On the inside it also reminds you of a Gothic
dining hall with pendant light fixtures.
24

UNIVERSITY. FIREPLACE
RV: And in one of the rooms upstairs there is a fireplace surround which has a kind of
Palladian quality. In all of these historical references we try to be suggestive and not
explicit, to be not absolutely correct but try to represent the essence of a historical
style. And for that reason we make all of our ornament flattened, if you will, almost
the way a sign or a drawing represents a three dimensional object. So what was
originally often three dimensional, a decorative element that was originally in relief,
we show as absolutely flat to get across this idea of historical reference as
representation which is not literal but which is generalised, abstracted, simplified and
we hope by those means we get to the essence of the style that we are suggesting in
the architecture. We are emphasising in our work now ornament and we are doing
lots of designs involving pattern and decorative arts. We are designing, currently,
fireplace surrounds, we are designing cornices, we are designing doors that are
highly decorative in their expression. And we are designing, as I said, teapots, plates,
glasses, china-ware, as well as furniture. This intrigues us because I've always been
interested in the decorative arts, and it does involve us as architects in another scale.
At the same time, we think our buildings are becoming flatter, more ordinary, if you
will, in terms of their spatial qualities and their form. And they are achieving their
aesthetic effects by means of appliqué ornament. And sometimes the ornament is
contradictory; the vocabulary of the ornament is contradictory to the form of the
building. That contradiction does not bother us, and that kind of tension that derives
from that contradiction can often make exciting architecture. I think ours is a time in
architecture for an aesthetic where richness and ambiguity are the ideal over unity
and clarity as an ideal. In the architecture of the Renaissance and the architecture of
the so-called Modern style in the early part of this century, the ideal was unity, the
ideal was clarity. One approach is not better than another; it's just a question of what
is appropriate for any particular time. I could make a comparison between the Pazzi
Chapel, which is the famous Renaissance chapel in Florence, and a typical Byzantine
Chapel. In the Pazzi Chapel the space inside is well lit and the form is precisely
delineated by the architectural articulation of classical vocabulary. In the
architecture of a Byzantine chapel the form is almost camouflaged rather than
clarified by the profusion of ornamental patterns upon it that often do not
correspond in any way to the actual shapes of the interior form. A Byzantine interior
is one where there are combinations, juxtapositions, collages of many materials and
many patterns. You can find in the same room Fresco, Cosmati work which is marble,
inlaid marble in different combinations, you can find, of course mosaics. You can find
again an effect where one is impressed by the richness of it all and not the clarity of it
all. There can even be ambiguity which can be a positive factor, because ambiguity
creates richness. You can read one thing in many ways. And I think ours is a time for
eclecticism, for complex and contradictory combinations of forms and symbols and
that we will get our effects in architecture that will be meaningful by a kind of
plurality of approaches.
Related talks:
Denise Scott Brown & Kenneth Grange Charles Jencks

Robert Venturi Design & Marketing Conundrums Hunt The Symbol The Three W
Update On Their Theories 1985 1985
2009
Site design & build by Spork Digital Ltd • © World Microfilms Publications Limited 2018 • Get in touch

Ornament, Scale & Ambiguity - Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown - Pidgeon Digital

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Ornament, Scale & Ambiguity - Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown - Pidgeon Digital

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ornament, Scale & Ambiguity - Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown - Pidgeon Digital

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ornament, Scale & Ambiguity | Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown | Pidgeon Digital 14/05/20, 16:24

HOME ABOUT EXPLORE SUBSCRIBE FAQ CONTACT

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY LABORATORY, PRINCETON

GUILDHOUSE APARTMENTS FOR THE ELDERLY,

©Venturi, Rauch & Scott Brown

STATE MOSQUE FOR IRAQ. COMPETITION ENTRY.

STATE MOSQUE FOR IRAQ. COMPETITION ENTRY.

STATE MOSQUE FOR IRAQ. COMPETITION ENTRY.

STATE MOSQUE FOR IRAQ. COMPETITION ENTRY.

STATE MOSQUE FOR IRAQ. COMPETITION ENTRY.

TOP: FURNITURE FOR KROLL INTERNATIONAL;

LEFT: TEAPOT FOR ALESSI, MILAN; RIGHT:

range is rather unusual.

AUSTIN, TEXAS. LEFT: AERIAL VIEW; RIGHT:

AUSTIN, TEXAS. REPUBLIC SQUARE DISTRICT.

AUSTIN, TEXAS. MUSEUM

AUSTIN, TEXAS. LA RAMBLA

HOUSES ON BLOCK ISLAND, RHODE ISLAND

HOUSES ON BLOCK ISLAND, RHODE ISLAND

WU HALL , BUTLER COLLEGE, PRINCETON

WU HALL , BUTLER COLLEGE, PRINCETON

WU HALL , BUTLER COLLEGE, PRINCETON

WU HALL , BUTLER COLLEGE, PRINCETON

WU HALL , BUTLER COLLEGE, PRINCETON

WU HALL , BUTLER COLLEGE, PRINCETON

WU HALL , BUTLER COLLEGE, PRINCETON

Denise Scott Brown & Kenneth Grange Charles Jencks

You might also like