Robert Venturi - Definition and Overview

Robert Venturi (June 25, 1925 -) is a Philadelphia-based architect who worked under Eero Saarinen and Louis Kahn before forming his own firm with John Rauch. As a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, Venturi met his future wife, the architect and planner Denise Scott Brown, who joined the firm in 1967. After Rauch's resignation in 1989, the firm took its current form and was named Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Inc.. Robert Venturi won the Pritzker Prize in 1991.

Venturi was a controversial critic of the purely functional and spare designs of modern orthodox architecture and was considered a counterrevolutionary.

He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1947 and received his M.F.A. there in 1950.

Important works by his firm include:

• Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery, London
• Provincial Capitol Building, Toulouse, France
• Guild House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Vanna Venturi House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Bibliography:

• Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, The Museum of Modern Art Press, New York 1966.
• Learning from Las Vegas (with D. Scott Brown and S. Izenour), Cambridge MA, 1972, revised 1977.
• Iconography and Electronics upon a Generic Architecture : A View from the Drafting Room, MIT Press, 1998.
• Architecture as Signs and Symbols (with D. Scott Brown), Harvard University Press, 2004.

External link

• Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Inc. firm web site (http://www.vsba.com/)
• Robert Venturi biography on the Pritzker Prize web site (http://www.pritzkerprize.com/venturi.htm)