Vanna Venturi House, 1964, Robert Venturi, Chestnut Hill, PA
After the death of her husband in 1959, Vanna Venturi commissioned her son to design a new home for her in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia.[1]Without providing a list of requirements or a set deadline, she requested only that it be simple, with most rooms on the same level and no garage, since she no longer owned a car.[2]Robert Venturi was 34 years old, teaching architecture at the University of Pennsylvania,[3]and had never realized a building of his own before.[4]Throughout the course of six years, Venturi went through six fully conceived designs.[5]Denise Scott Brown, his professional associate and wife, said the first five designs were clearly influenced by the architectural style of his mentor, the masterful Louis Kahn.[6]Venturi and Scott Brown developed the sixth and final design, which, unlike its streamlined Modernist predecessors, takes a playful approach to traditional form.[7]According to Scott Brown, for example, elements of a Michelangelesque city gate and marble flooring suggestive of a town square became but parts of a liberated burst of eclectic ornamentation.[8]The architect’s mother lived in the home for a decade after its completion in 1964, and he and Scott Brown moved in for a short time after they married in 1967.[9]In 1966, Venturi published his book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, in which he laid out his vision for a radical break from Modern tradition and consequently sparked the beginnings of the Postmodernism architecture movement.[10][11]Although the house was sold after Vanna Venturi’s death in 1973, it has more recently in 2016 been purchased by a Philadelphia lawyer and long-time admirer of the home for 1.375 million dollars – not bad for a house which original cost of construction was $43,000.[12]
Venturi & Brown
The Vanna Venturi House was designed to challenge the Modernist notion that there exists a perfect, universal architecture; and, paraphrasing Venturi’s book, welcomes complexity and invites contradiction – indeed the non-sequitur – to take part in constructing a stimulating and memorable experience of space.[13][14]One of its most celebrated aspects is the architect’s clever incorporation of traditional design elements.[15]The front of the house features a gable that is unusually split down the middle, a front door hidden away in a square opening, an oversized chimney, and rectilinear windows that reference various architectural styles and eras – from Classical Rome to mid 20th-century International Style.[16]The wide facade distorts the actual size of the 1,986-square-foot structure, and includes a purely decorative wooden arch over the entryway to make the entrance appear taller.[17][18]Inside, the living room serves as the hearth of the home, with the kitchen and dining room on one side, the master bedroom and utility room on the other, and an upstairs bedroom directly above.[19]The staircase is located in the living room near the entrance and squeezes its way around the fireplace, wide at the bottom and narrowly pushed to one side at the top.[20]Overhead is another staircase that whimsically – and in the spirit of Venturi’s non-sequitur – leads to a solid wall! [below right][21] The home embodies Venturi’s belief that an effective architecture is not one that is abstract and only functional, but one that excites and surprises its visitors![22]
The Vanna Venturi House is widely recognized as one of the pioneering structures in what historians recognize as a postmodernist building.[23]In 1989, it was given the AIA Twenty-Five Year Award for its lasting influence on the course of architectural history.[24]In 2012, it received the AIA Philadelphia Landmark Building Award and was included in the 2015 PBS program “10 Buildings that Changed America.”[25]The house was also added to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places the following year.[26]Over several decades, the Vanna Venturi House has been lauded by countless architecture fans and famous practitioners like Peter Eisenman, Richard Pain, and Frederic Schwartz for having been the first structure to be both rooted in, and separate from, the reigning tradition of Modernism.[27][28]
NOTES
[1]Frearson, Amy. “Postmodernism: Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi.” Dezeen.
[2]Frearson, Amy. “Postmodernism: Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi.” Dezeen.
[3]He was also the teaching assistant to architect Louis Kahn.
[4]Frearson, Amy. “Postmodernism: Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi.” Dezeen.
[5]Perez, Adelyn. “AD Classics: Vanna Venturi House / Robert Venturi.” ArchDaily.
[6]Frearson, Amy. “Postmodernism: Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi.” Dezeen.
[7]Frearson, Amy. “Postmodernism: Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi.” Dezeen.
[8]Frearson, Amy. “Postmodernism: Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi.” Dezeen.
[9]Frearson, Amy. “Postmodernism: Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi.” Dezeen.
[10]Frearson, Amy. “Postmodernism: Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi.” Dezeen.
[11]Le, Trang. “Vanna Venturi House.” YouTube.
[12]Johnson, Sara. “The Vanna Venturi House’s New Owner Settles Into the Postmodern Icon.” Architect Magazine.
[13]Venturi painted the house green solely because famous Modern architect Marcel Breuer once said it should never be done.
[14]Le, Trang. “Vanna Venturi House.” YouTube.
[15] Frearson, Amy. “Postmodernism: Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi.” Dezeen.
[16]Frearson, Amy. “Postmodernism: Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi.” Dezeen.
[17]Bukowski, Tegan, and Randall Schoen. “1960 Vanna Venturi House Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania.” FIU School of Architecture Design Theory.
[18]Johnson, Sara. “The Vanna Venturi House’s New Owner Settles Into the Postmodern Icon.” Architect Magazine.
[19]Frearson, Amy. “Postmodernism: Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi.” Dezeen.
[20]Le, Trang. “Vanna Venturi House.” YouTube.
[21]Le, Trang. “Vanna Venturi House.” YouTube.
[22]Le, Trang. “Vanna Venturi House.” YouTube.
[23]Perez, Adelyn. “AD Classics: Vanna Venturi House / Robert Venturi.” ArchDaily.
[24]“Vanna Venturi House.” Architect Magazine.
[25]Galván, Cristina Guadalupe. “The First Postmodern Anything.” Uncube Magazine.
[26]Johnson, Sara. “The Vanna Venturi House’s New Owner Settles Into the Postmodern Icon.” Architect Magazine.
[27]Perez, Adelyn. “AD Classics: Vanna Venturi House / Robert Venturi.” ArchDaily.
[28]Frearson, Amy. “Postmodernism: Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi.” Dezeen.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bukowski, Tegan, and Randall Schoen. “1960 Vanna Venturi House Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania.” FIU School of Architecture Design Theory. http://designtheory.fiu.edu/ home.html.
Frearson, Amy. “Postmodernism: Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi.” Dezeen. August 12, 2015. Accessed May 09, 2019. https://www.dezeen.com/2015/08/12/postmodernism- architecture-vanna-venturi-house-philadelphia-robert-venturi-denise-scott-brown/.
Galván, Cristina Guadalupe. “The First Postmodern Anything.” Uncube Magazine. September 02, 2015. Accessed May 15, 2019. http://www.uncubemagazine.com/blog/15926627.
Johnson, Sara. “The Vanna Venturi House’s New Owner Settles Into the Postmodern Icon.” Architect Magazine. November 17, 2016. Accessed May 09, 2019. https://www.architect magazine.com/design/the-vanna-venturi-houses-new-owner-settles-into-the-postmodern-icon_o.
Le, Trang. “Vanna Venturi House.” YouTube. July 08, 2014. Accessed May 15, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG157MWKEas.
Perez, Adelyn. “AD Classics: Vanna Venturi House / Robert Venturi.” ArchDaily. June 02, 2010. Accessed May 09, 2019. https://www.archdaily.com/62743/ad-classics-vanna-venturi- house-robert-venturi.
“Vanna Venturi House.” Architect Magazine. March 18, 2015. Accessed May 15, 2019. https://www.architectmagazine.com/project-gallery/vanna-venturi-house.