[Ar.Priyanka Mathur]

Robert Venturi might be considered as one of the fathers of Postmodern architecture.

He is also known for coining the maxim "Less is a bore" as antidote to Mies van der Rohe's famous modernist dictum "Less is more". Together with his wife, Dennis Scoot Brown, Venturis are running an architectural office and their designs forced the American architects and planners to reconsider the Modernist sway of architectural practice, and to perform a more humanist architecture that belongs to American traditions.

[Ar.Niyati Gupta]

Robert Venturi Vanna Venturi House, Philadelphia, PA, 1964

Venturi designs this building for his mother. The design of the building embodies several “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.

[Ar.Priyanka Mathur]

More about Vanna Venturi House, Philadelphia, PA, 1964


The contradiction between inside and outside, however, is not total: inside, the plan as a whole reflects the symmetrical consistency of the outside; outside, the perforations in the elevations reflect the circumstantial distortions within.

Concerning the inside, the plan is originally symmetrical with a central vertical core from which radiate two almost symmetrical diagonal walls that separate two end spaces in front from a major central space in back. This almost Palladian rigidity and symmetry is distorted, however, to accommodate to the particular needs of the spaces: the kitchen on the right, for instance, varies from the bedroom on the left.

[Ar.Niyati Gupta]

Vanna Venturi House, Philadelphia, PA, 1964