03-15-2013
Daylight Hours
Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier
I was recently in France visiting Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye in Poissy, just outside of Paris. Upon arrival, I was instantly struck by its audaciousness and uncompromising rejection of previous notions of "the beautiful" as well as its attempt to create an architecture devoid of anything but space and movement through space. Architectural form, in his view, was experiential and depended on the promenade architecturale. The Villa Savoye was to be perceived as an "object in a landscape."
Unexpectedly, as I walked through the building, I kept drawing comparisons between it and Robert Venturi's mother's house.
The Vanna Venturi House in Chestnut Hill, a neighborhood in Philadelphia, synthesizes Venturi's ideas as presented in his book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. His book would answer Le Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture, as exemplified by the Villa Savoye (or The Daylight Hours), and break modernism's moralizing claim on the field. The Vanna Venturi House positions architecture as an object made in time, and as such, with a history. Its parts can be assembled referencing different times in this continuum, and a house – or any structure – can be an assemblage of very diverse elements and ideas.
Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi
References to vernacular architecture (the pitched roof and chimney), mannerist architecture (the arch over the front threshold), modernist architecture (the strip windows) can be cut and pasted together, as can ideas about space. Freed from ideal proportions or rational orders, the putting together of a building becomes largely symbolic.
When talking to Fred Schwartz, author of the definitive book on Venturi entitled Mother's House, he recounted an interesting Venturi & Rauch project, the Lieb House. James Venturi, son of Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, made a short film entitled Saving Lieb House which chronicles the pop art house's move via barge from Barnegat Light, NJ to Glen Cove, Long Island. Though not as significant as the Villa Savoye or the Vanna Venturi House, this house illustrates a very contemporary idea: architecture as art object.
Lieb House by Robert Venturi
My favorite line in the film is when Denise Scott Brown asks, "How does a little thing like that trap its whole environment?" All I could think was, "Denise, have you considered Landscape with the Fall of Icarus?" "Big questions of scale," she answered. She probably had.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel
by Angelo Monaco
Unexpectedly, as I walked through the building, I kept drawing comparisons between it and Robert Venturi's mother's house.
The Vanna Venturi House in Chestnut Hill, a neighborhood in Philadelphia, synthesizes Venturi's ideas as presented in his book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. His book would answer Le Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture, as exemplified by the Villa Savoye (or The Daylight Hours), and break modernism's moralizing claim on the field. The Vanna Venturi House positions architecture as an object made in time, and as such, with a history. Its parts can be assembled referencing different times in this continuum, and a house – or any structure – can be an assemblage of very diverse elements and ideas.
Vanna Venturi House by Robert VenturiReferences to vernacular architecture (the pitched roof and chimney), mannerist architecture (the arch over the front threshold), modernist architecture (the strip windows) can be cut and pasted together, as can ideas about space. Freed from ideal proportions or rational orders, the putting together of a building becomes largely symbolic.
When talking to Fred Schwartz, author of the definitive book on Venturi entitled Mother's House, he recounted an interesting Venturi & Rauch project, the Lieb House. James Venturi, son of Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, made a short film entitled Saving Lieb House which chronicles the pop art house's move via barge from Barnegat Light, NJ to Glen Cove, Long Island. Though not as significant as the Villa Savoye or the Vanna Venturi House, this house illustrates a very contemporary idea: architecture as art object.
Lieb House by Robert VenturiMy favorite line in the film is when Denise Scott Brown asks, "How does a little thing like that trap its whole environment?" All I could think was, "Denise, have you considered Landscape with the Fall of Icarus?" "Big questions of scale," she answered. She probably had.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegelby Angelo Monaco