Book Reflection | Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. Venturi, R. (1966). Chapters 1-5
Revisiting and Demystifying Venturi
Complexity and Contradiction is a book that I was discouraged from reading as an undergraduate student. Professors told me it did not apply to actual architecture practice, its lessons were too difficult to integrate into functional architectural projects, and post-modernism ended in the 90s. In graduate school, I learned that this advice was misguided. I noticed that excerpts were required readings in many studio or elective courses. It gets cited all over the place in contemporary discourse. Many professors consider it the greatest contribution to architectural theory since “Towards a New Architecture” by Corbusier. Given its importance, I've decided to revisit the book. I'll start with a quick summary and a look at the book's structure, then I'll review each chapter, highlighting important points to help build a clear understanding of the book.
Structure
The book is divided into 11 chapters. The first two chapters are essentially introductions outlining the general claims of the book. The following 8 Chapters outline specific architecture/formal techniques that achieve the goals outlined earlier. The last chapter, entitled: “Work” shows architectural work by Venturi, demonstrating the applicability of the above mentioned techniques.
Overview
The book's central argument is that the Modern era is marked by complexity and contradictions, suggesting that architecture relevant to our time should mirror these characteristics. It then notes that the ideas of complexity and contradiction are not necessarily new, but could be found by looking back in time and in different mediums. The book uses a vast library of precedents to demonstrate the effects of the techniques of complexity and contradiction.
Chapter 1: Nonstraightforward Architecture: A Gentle Manifesto
The first few sentences outline the theme of the book perfectly:
“I like complexity and contradiction in architecture. I do not like the incoherence or arbitrariness of incompetent architecture nor the precious intricacies of picturesqueness or expressionism. Instead, I speak of a complex and contradictory architecture based on the richness and ambiguity of modern experience” (Venturi 16).
Venturi notes that complexity and contradiction has been explored in other artforms extensively but architecture has shown resistance to these ideas due to its dogmatic pursuit of the orthodox Modern architectural values. He further clarifies his understanding of complexity and contradiction in the most notorious paragraph of the book and this chapter:
“I am for richness of meaning rather than clarity of meaning; for the implicit function as well as the explicit function. I prefer ‘both-and’ to ‘either-or,’ black and white, and sometimes gray, to black or white. A valid architecture evokes many levels of meaning and combinations of focus: its space and its elements become readable and workable in several ways at once” (Venturi 16).
2. Complexity and Contradiction vs. Simplification or Picturesqueness
This chapter reads as a justification for the books production. There is a subtle frustration perceivable in Venturi’s tone as he further develops on the first chapter. The notion in this section is that modern architecture “puritanically” follows the values of simplification, clarity, and exclusion. He sites the work of Phillip Johnson and Mies who are notorious for expressing these values.
One should note that book isn’t for wild complexity or arbitrary strangeness. The book advocates for a specific refined and sophisticated complexity suited for a contemporary society.
3. Ambiguity
This is the first chapter in which a specific technique of complexity and contradiction is articulated. Ambiguity is used to describe how an architectural element might poses multiple readings at once. This creates an ambiguous relationship between object and viewer. Like many techniques in this book, Venturi draws references from outside architecture. In this case, Cleanth Brooks on poetry:
“...if the poet... must perform dramatize and oneness of the experience, even though paying tribute to its diversity, then his use of paradox and ambiguity is seen as necessary.”
William Empson also on poetry:
“dared to treat what [had] . . . been regarded as a deficiency in poetry, imprecision of meaning, as poetry's chief virtue . . .” (Venturi 20).
“from Shakespeare, “the supreme ambiguist, not so much from the confusion of his ideas and the muddle of his text, as some scholars believe, as simply from the power and complexity of his mind and art” (Venturi 20).
These authors are advocating for a multiplicity of meaning on that grounds of improved potency and poetic effectiveness. Venturi is simply advocating for architects to consider the same.
In certain parts of this chapter, one tastes hints of Graham Harmon’s notion of undermining-overmining:
“the complexity and contradiction that results from the juxtaposition of what an image is and what it seems. Joseph Albers calls "the discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect" a contradiction which is "the origin of art” And, indeed, complexity of meaning, with its resultant ambiguity and tension, has been characteristic of painting and amply recognized in art criticism. Abstract Expressionism acknowledges perceptual ambiguity, and the basis of Optical Art is shifting juxtapositions and ambiguous dualities relating to form and expression. Pop painters, too, have employed ambiguity to create paradoxical content as well as to exploit perceptual possibilities” (Venturi 20).
Venturi argues that architecture is well suited for this kind of ambiguity because of its tendencies. The nature of architecture as being real, functional, and abstract introduces a complex and contradictory oscillation which promotes a richness of meaning as opposed to a clarity of meaning:
“Ambiguity and tension are everywhere in an architecture of complexity and contradiction. Architecture is form and substance—abstract and concrete—and its meaning derives from its interior characteristics and its particular context. An architectural element is perceived as form and structure, texture and material. These oscillating relationships, complex and contradictory, are the source of the ambiguity and tension characteristic to the medium of architecture.” (Venturi 20).
4. Contradictory Levels: The Phenomenon of “Both-And” in Architecture
Both-And for venturi refers to an architectural element which poses two contradictory characteristics simultaneously. He uses the conjunction “yet” to communicate such condition:
“Le Corbusier's Shodhan House is closed yet open—a cube, precisely closed by its corners, yet randomly opened on its surfaces; his Villa Savoye is simple outside yet complex inside. The Tudor plan of Barrington Court is symmetrical yet asymmetrical; Guarini's Church of the Immaculate Conception in Turin is a duality in plan and yet a unity; Sir Edwin Lutyens' entrance gallery at Middleton Park is directional space, yet it terminates at a blank wall; Vignola's façade for the pavilion at Bomarzo contains a portal, yet it is a blank portico; Kahn's buildings contain crude concrete yet polished granite; an urban street is directional as a route yet static as a place. This series of conjunctive ‘yets’ describes an architecture of contradiction at varying levels of program and structure. None of these ordered contradictions represents a search for beauty, but neither as paradoxes, are they caprice” (Venturi 23).
This section advocates against a pedagogical clarity and supports contradiction which is very much contrary how architecture is conventionally taught in the US.
One should also note that this both-and scenario can occur at various scales, from urban planning to details and thus, can be nested.
The last paragraph of this section seems to demonstrate the possible complexity of Both-And. It is not merely the simple contradictions quoted above:
“The double meanings inherent in the phenomenon both-and can involve metamorphosis as well as contradiction. I have described how the omni-directional spire of the tower of Christ Church, Spitalfields, evolves into a directional pavilion at its base, but a perceptual rather than a formal kind of change in meaning is possible. In equivocal relationships one contradictory meaning usually dominates another, but in complex compositions the relationship is not always constant. This is especially true as the observer moves through or around a building, and by extension through a city: at one moment one meaning can be perceived as dominant; at another moment a different meaning seems paramount. In St. George, Bloomsbury, for instance, the contradictory axes inside become alternatingly dominant or recessive as the observer moves within them, so that the same space changes meaning. Here is another dimension of ‘space, time and architecture’ which involves the multiple focus.” (Venturi 32).
5. Contradictory Levels Continued: The Double-Functioning Element
This section expresses the same values as the previous chapter, but it focuses on use, function, and structure, while the previous chapter focused on aesthetics and composition. As such their is not much to reflect on.
Venturi notes that many Modern buildings are multi-functional, yet some hide this fact in favor of abstraction and consistency. Others seems to express their mixed functionality. Venturi is pointing out a contradiction that I have always thought about but is clearly expressed here. That the abstract concept of Modern architecture often contradicts with its desire of expressed function. For example, the service cores of the Crown Hall in Chicago are antithetical to the buildings desire for uninterrupted universal space.