ROBERT CHARLES Venturi, jr.

JUNE 25, 1925 - PRESENT

PRAKHAR VARSHNEY
13ARB-560
GE8099
 Venturi is known for coining the Maxim
“LESS IS A BORE”,
a postmodern antidote to MIES VAN DER ROHE’s
LESS IS MORE.

LESS IS MORE is very popular in nearly every architectural school of the

world, but the quote by ROBERT VENTURI LESS IS A BORE – even if it is
not very famous, I believe that it is equally important.

THE MERIT OF MIES (as well as having built wonderful buildings) is in

having created a slogan, easy to remember, nice to hear and extremely
brilliant – so that it would seem to be created straight out from a
marketing agency. This phrase has helped him to make his architecture
famous, first in the US and then in the rest of the world.

LESS IS A BORE – ROBERT VENTURI’S CRITIC

If Less is More is known by all, it is much more difficult to find a fan of
Less is a Bore. In contrast with many of the dictates of the Modern
Movement, there is Robert Venturi.
According to Robert Venturi, the architect is not the figure that has
the task of educating the masses from the top of his desk, but he has the
duty to observe reality and learn lessons from there. In the opinion of the
creator of Less is a Bore, the idea of less is more is suitable only for
architects, not for people.

Both sentences are slogans, and architecture should not be made of

slogans, nor should these slogans be taken as holy words. Especially in
the case of Mies, his sentence is still taken as a guideline for many
architects (in many cases better so). But, as stated by Venturi, the same
architects who say that they do not want decorations and prefer the
absence of styles, are automatically placing themselves within a well-
defined style and a form of decor.
VANNA VENTURI HOUSE
 One of the first prominent works of the postmodern architecture movement.
 Located in the neighbourhood of CHESTNUT HILL IN PHILADELPHIA,
PENNYSYLVANIA
 The five-room house stands only about 30 feet (9 m) tall at the top of the
chimney, but has a monumental front facade, an effect achieved by
intentionally manipulating the architectural elements that indicate a building's
scale.
 The house was constructed with
intentional formal architectural,
historical and aesthetic
contradictions. Venturi has
compared the iconic front facade
to "a child's drawing of a
house. Yet he has also written,
"This building recognizes
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 and of the house in general, and the circumstantial
elements of a house in particular."

GUILD HOUSE
 Along with the Vanna Venturi House it is considered to be one of the earliest
expressions of postmodern architecture, and helped establish Venturi as one
of the leading architects of the 20th century.
 Employing a combination of nondescript commercial architecture and ironic
historical references, Guild House represented a conscious rejection
of Modernist ideals and was widely cited in the subsequent development of
the postmodern movement.
 The building's architecture combines historical forms with "banal" 20th-
century commercialism, hiding a "slyly intellectual agenda" behind its
"apparent ordinariness"
 In Guild House the ornamental-
symbolic elements are more or
less literally appliqué... symbolism
of the decoration happens to be
ugly and ordinary with a dash of
ironic heroic and original, and the
shed is straight ugly and ordinary,
though in its brick and windows it is
symbolic too.