ROBERT VENTURI
(1925-Present)
For my last investigation, I decided to go the same route that I did with Kuramata; picking someone I have never heard of with the hopes that I will learn more about them. Robert Venturi was the target of my randomness, so I jumped right in and began to get father some info.
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| Vanna Venturi House |
Robert Venturi was born in Philadelphia in 1925. He attended Princeton in the 1940's and graduated in 1950. He has since become well-known as one of the best postmodern architects currently in the business. In 1951, Venturi worked under Eero Saarinen (designer of the Gateway Arch) in Michigan, and Louis Kahn in Philadelphia. This early experience allowed him to gain a lot of knowledge which he absorbed very quickly. In 1954 he was awarded the Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, Italy. From 1954 to 1965, Venturi held various teaching positions at the University of Pennsylvania, where he eventually rose from a teaching assistant to an associate professor. He also met his future wife, Denise Scott Brown, at the university.
Venturi's architectural works are known more for their opposition to the typical 1960's, modernism approach to design. Venturi is known to have said "Less is a bore" in response to Mies van der Rohe's phrase "Less is more".
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| Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery |
In 1960, Venturi started his first architecture firm, Venturi and Short, with William Short. After a series of additions and replacements among his staff over the years, the name eventually ended up as Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates (Scott Brown being his wife, Denise Scott Brown, who joined the firm in 1969). The firm won the Architecture Firm Award by the American Institute of Architects in 1985. It is still up and running today, with recent projects including university buildings and civic buildings in London and Japan.
Some of Venturi's most famous architectural works include the Vanna Venturi House, the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, and the Oberlin Art Museum addition.
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