Postmodern Architecture: Venturi and Gehry

Reviews and Quizzes

  • Reviews will be held on Wednesday and Friday.
  • A quiz will be administered on one of those days.

Origins of Western Architecture

  • The semester began by examining the origins of dominant traditions in Western architecture over the past 400-500 years, specifically in the Italian Renaissance.

Emergence of Modern Architecture

  • The focus shifted to the emergence of modern architecture.
  • Modern architecture involved an abandonment of historical types and languages, seeking value beyond them.
  • It searched for value in experience and everyday life.
  • Examples include Kahn and Alto, who emphasized instrumentality, depicting buildings as tools to facilitate specific activities.
  • Earlier examples, such as Saarinen and Boston City Hall, focused on monumentality and public symbolism.

Contrast in Establishing Value

  • The St. Louis Arch and the Washington Monument can be compared in how they establish value.
  • Consider where their forms come from, reactions to them, and which parts of awareness they activate.

Postmodernism: Venturi and Gehry

  • The lecture will explore postmodernism through the works of Robert Venturi and Frank Gehry.

Robert Venturi

  • Venturi's mother's house is an example that will be examined.
  • Venturi studied under Kahn in Philadelphia and practiced with his wife, Denise Scott Brown.
  • His treatise, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (mid-1960s), is considered the most influential architectural work since Le Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture.

Complexity and Contradiction

  • The title highlights the central theme of establishing value in architecture.
  • How do architectural forms claim value? Where does meaning originate?
  • Postmodernism is a broad cultural category that is difficult to define, especially while it is ongoing.
  • A Compelling description of postmodernism is a mistrust of grand narratives.
  • It questions those who claim to know the ultimate meaning or secret of life.
  • Postmodernism encourages individual and collective exploration and testing.

Global Society

  • The rise of postmodernism is linked to an increasingly global society.
  • There is constant exposure to diverse political philosophies, religious practices, cuisines, and cultural systems.
  • This raises questions about how to judge between different cultural forms and select a basis for establishing value.
  • Venturi and Gehry were among the first to address these issues.

Venturi's Work in London

  • Venturi primarily worked in the United States, but in the 1980s, he won a competition in London.
  • The context includes Parliament in Westminster, Whitehall, and Trafalgar Square.
  • Whitehall features monumental British government institutions.
  • Trafalgar Square is named after the Battle of Trafalgar, where Lord Nelson defeated Napoleon's fleet.
  • Nelson's column stands in Trafalgar Square.

Symbolism and Monumentality

  • Trafalgar Square and Westminster Cathedral represent the poles of symbolism and monumentality in British society.
  • They frame the apparatus of government and its relationship to the crown.
  • The National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery are significant buildings in this area.

National Portrait Gallery

  • The National Portrait Gallery is a neoclassical building that presents itself as a singular whole.
  • It uses bilateral symmetry and hierarchy.
  • The facade is designed to stretch along the length of Trafalgar Square.
  • The building is capped by a small dome.

Sainsbury Wing

  • Venturi's addition, the Sainsbury Wing, was a competition entry financed by the Sainsbury brothers (of the Sainsbury's grocery chain).
  • The National Portrait Gallery, originally a narrow building, has been expanded over time, resulting in a jumbled mix of galleries.
  • The Sainsbury Wing sits off to the side of the original building.
  • The reorganization of circulation in the museum involved removing the main entrance stairs.
  • Voids in the building invite exploration.

Influence of Palladio

  • Palladio's influence was very strong in England.
  • Venturi and Denise Scott Brown deferred to the historical symbolism of the older building but with a twist.
  • The Sainsbury Wing doesn't touch the original building, separated by a walkway.
  • It connects on the upper floor (second floor) via a rotunda.
  • The Sainsbury Wing picks up the scale and character of the older building's entablature line and classical order.
  • The pieces of the building unravel, opening up large entry portals.
  • The building features a jumble of neoplastic form.
  • The architectural style changes every 30-60 feet as one moves around the Sainsbury Wing.
  • The building blends with the surrounding buildings.
  • The shifting, accidental form expresses this blending.

Interior Design

  • The original organizational axis, a grand stair that leads up into the museum, is de-emphasized
  • A glass wall along the stairway opens the view to the street life of Trafalgar Square.
  • The building's character and architectural language change as one moves around it.
  • The rear of the building presents a blank facade with a limestone plaque that says "The National Gallery."

Interpretation

  • Venturi and Denise Scott Brown defer to the authority of the Crown, the National Portrait Gallery's program, and the historic style as an emblem of that authority.
  • They suggest other sources of value and meaning.
  • The building defers to the streetscape, which can be interpreted as a political statement.
  • The source of unity lies in the experience.

Original Plan

  • The original plan of the National Gallery has a main entrance that continues through the building.
  • The main longitudinal axis is emphasized, drawing visitors in as they climb the stairway in the Sainsbury Wing.
  • A vista with glass and benches provides views of tourists walking back and forth.
  • The formalized galleries have skylights that follow the language of the old building.
  • The interior decoration of the old building varies due to additions from different periods.
  • The crooked angle of the new wing internally is intentional, expressing the difference between internal and external spaces.
  • The difference between these two are made up by the "pocher" (irregular and adaptive spaces).
  • A main promenade under the formal galleries contrasts with the vista from the top of the stairs.
  • The space focuses on a triptych on the wall at the end.

Design Details

  • Gray stone is used, similar to Brunelleschi's San Lorenzo.
  • The columns have ballooning bases, resembling a distorted Doric order.
  • The columns diminish in size, and the passageway narrows.
  • The walls are sloped, creating a distorted vista.

Establishing Value

  • The source of value is questioned: is it adherence to the rules of authority, sincere presentation of inherited rules, or something else?
  • The building emphasizes the viewer's experience, imagination, and ability to interpret the whole from disparate parts.
  • It provides a functional addition to the National Gallery and its political program.
  • It questions blind allegiance to any authority and seeks alternate sources of value.

Venturi's Mother's House

  • Vanna Venturi was a quiet woman whose photo appeared on the cover of Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture.
  • The building declares, "I'm a house."
  • It resembles Michelangelo's gateway in Rome and Wright's Winslow House.
  • It depicts shelter in terms of formal meaning systems but seems intentionally wrong.
  • It has a gable roof with a crack and an off-center chimney.

Symbolism

  • The square shape evokes the divine and humanism.
  • The circle is represented mostly with a void
  • The figure is now the designer's mother, sitting in a chair.
  • The house contains a comfortable interior, though somewhat discombobulated.
  • The plan includes an entry hallway, stair, living room, dining table, kitchen, outdoor porch, fireplace, bath, bedrooms, and a sewing room.
  • The pieces are bent and twisted, not aligned.
  • All the necessary functional and symbolic pieces are present: the hearth, mantle, stairway, and light.
  • All the comfortable furnishings are there that his mother would have wanted

Design Elements

  • The stairway leads to a generous bedroom with a balcony.
  • The fireplace is a focal point, but the hearth's form is not the source of value.
  • The value lies in the use of the hearth.
  • Venturi deflects to the user's pattern of use.
  • This concept aligns with the visual revolution initiated by artists like Cezanne, who explored the theory of perception and the establishment of meaning.

Frank Gehry's House

  • Designed in the early 1970s, about ten years after Venturi's house.
  • Located in Santa Monica, outside of Los Angeles.
  • Gehry bought a 1930s wood-frame tract house and proceeded to dismantle or add to it.
  • He wrapped a wall around part of it, adding a kitchen and opening up the house.
  • The addition rejects conventional standards of orthogonality and rationality.
  • Skylights prioritize views and light over form.
  • The kitchen is located in the screen wall.
  • The dining room provides a delightful experience with windows and reflections.
  • The inside framing of the outer wall was exposed, creating a sense of flow.
  • The house has a rough, gritty feel but is filled with elegant furnishings.
  • The spatial dynamic is never quite complete, resisting a sense of wholeness.
  • This house led to Gehry's commission for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

  • An enormous building in Bilbao, along the river and highway system.
  • It merges with the large-scale infrastructure of movement and spectacle.
  • It put Bilbao back on the map.
  • Gehry received the commission after designing the Disney Hall in Los Angeles.
  • The building claims the context of movement, mountains, and infrastructure.
  • It looks like it's moving and incomplete.

Design Elements

  • The exterior features slick, reflective forms in stone and titanium.
  • Curving glass walls and exposed framing are present.
  • Dramatic interior spaces answer the call for structural order in unconventional ways.
  • One gallery houses the largest collection of Richard Serra's work.
  • The works exhibit an impossible mix of contradiction and impossible curves

Inspirations

  • Gehry became interested in fish, keeping a carp in his bathtub.
  • This interest is reflected in his work, such as the Experience Music Project in Seattle and his jewelry lines.
  • Lamps were made with Formica scales.
  • The same forms were used in buildings, such as a restaurant in Japan.
  • The building alludes to living forms and movement.
  • It resists any concrete condensation of form.
  • The interior atrium continues this spectacle with different patterns of material.

Conclusion

  • The idea of order, unity, and wholeness is a foundation for value in architecture.
  • This is seen in the symbolism of the square and circle.
  • The unity of space reaches beyond its walls.
  • The idea includes telescoping orders, as seen in Brunelleschi, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (San Carlino), which Gehry considers his favorite building.
  • The notion that experience, not forms, is the source of value has grown over the last four centuries.
  • It's not the particular message but the overall experience that matters.
  • The Guggenheim in Bilbao references Wright's museum in New York City, involving the community in the experience of art.
  • The quest to understand art becomes a community activity, building camaraderie and providing unity of experience.