lecture 3 Language - Venturi, Complexity (1966)

Notebook: CAF20_lectures_3_language
Created: 10/15/2020 10:41 AM Updated: 10/15/2020 11:34 AM
Author: stefanoppasseri@gmail.com

GENTLE MANIFESTO
C&C is about the ambiguity of modern experience
Eliot talks about the difficulty of modern poetry

C&C has always been there in arch

since its origin - Vitruvius: commodity, firmness, delight are very hard
to juggle

this is in reaction to M "puritanism"

indictment of the pure in favor of the hybrid
both-and instead of either-or - M leaves out too much from arch

the difficult whole

COMPLEXITY AND CONTRADICTION V SIMPLIFICATION OR

PICTURESQUE
M wants to break w tradition and start all over again
oversimplification is a problem

history is very important for V - complexity and contradiction comes

in part to a renewed engagement w history
but history not as a linear progress of successive zeitgeists
history here is seen as a container where all styles/referents are
simultaneously available to the architect - and this include both high
and low brow
this desire to stop the mad rush forward of progress, which is one of
the hallmarks of PM, is also the leitmotif of PE's end of the classical.
the classical ends when this thrust forward of linear history and
progress  (which arguably started in the Renaissance and reaches its
peak during the Enlightenment) is interrupted. 
I guess in both PE and RV, what comes next is arch reflecting on itself
as a semiotic system
though what each means by that transition as we have seen is quite
different...

critique of Corb - writes about great primary forms, lack of

ambiguity... but in practice, his buildings seem to constantly
contradict that (just think of R&S hyper-complex and contra reading
of Garches)

M reaches its "purity" by separating arch "from the experience of life

and the needs of society" (Johnson and Hitchcock "purge" M arch
from its political agenda to make it palatable to US public - int'l style
makes this problem even worse... also... here RV is talking very much
like an advocate of the "contingency" camp in the debate that
emerged later as a reaction to the linguistic turn)

less is a bore

RV doesn't like oversimplification, however, C&C doesn't mean

picturesque

discrepancy between Corbs writings and works in terms of complexity

(26) - (btw, Evans says that there is exactly this discrepancy in Mies)

desire for complexity is not a new thing... it comes with the mannerist
phase of a historical period

AMBIGUITY
C&C is a result of juxtaposition between "an image and what it
seems" - (Rowe and Slutzky come to mind)

ambiguity is necessary for contradictory elements to create a new

kind of whole eg Moretti's apartments etc

ambiguity can be bad

CONTRADICTORY LEVELS: BOTH AND

replace the tradition of either-or
relates to part-to-whole
arch includes many levels of meaning to breed ambiguity and tension

St. George's Bloomsbury perfect example of both and mentality...

CONTRADICTORY LEVELS: DOUBLE FUNCTION

relates to use and structure of individual elements
Kahn - gallery as replacement for room and corridor because it does
both
the separation of room and corridor is a characteristic example of M
mind in terms of specialization of program functions

RV proposes the multifunctioning room (reminds me of Cedric P)