Robert Venturi Contribution

Best known as a critic of modern buildings that lack ornamentation and pizazz, Robert Venturi is the defiant architect who pushed what became known as the Post Modern movement of the twentieth century. According to Venturi, "Less is a bore".

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 25, 1925, Robert Charles Venturi, Jr. has been recognized as one of America’s most successful architectural figures of the twentieth century. Venturi was born to Robert Venturi Sr. and Vanna Venturi and was raised as a Quaker. As a youth he attended Episcopal Academy in Merion, Pennsylvania. Venturi graduated from Princeton summa cum laude in 1947. He also a member-elect of Phi Beta Kappa and won the D’Amato Prize in Architecture while there (The Nassau Herald). Venturi went onto receive his M.F.A. from Princeton as well in 1950. After graduating he worked briefly alongside Eero Saarinen in Michigan and then with Louis Kahn in Philidelphia. Venturi was awarded the Rome Prize Fellowship for the American Academy in Rome in 1954. While in Europe Robert toured other countries and studied various periods of architecture for two years. Once back in the United States, Venturi taught at Pennesylvania University from 1954-1965. He started as Kahn’s teaching assistant and eventually made his way to Associated Professor. It was here that Venturi met fellow professor and architect Denise Scott Brown, who would later become his wife on July 23, 1967.

Venturi initially created the Venturi and Short Firm, while working with William Short in 1960. But overtime, the firm became Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, or VSBA. The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania based firm has completed more than 400 projects, each distinctively suited to the special needs ...

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...and terra cotta around its outside. Venturi's idea, he said in an interview, was to design a museum that would not seem overly imposing, to adults or children (Egan).

CONCLUSION-

Robert Venturi is a man that I can respect without even personally knowing. He challenged the belief system of his time and went against mainstream design to pursue his own interpretation of art and architecture. I admire his wanting to have his wife as an equal partner in all his endeavors. Venturi was more than just an artist; he was a major figure in the postmodernism movement. His work is a reflection of his divergence. Venturi was able to capture historic elements such as the arch and work them into a modernist design that captured, even deceived the viewer. Venturi was a thinker, a rebel and most importantly was an individual, who was not afraid to express himself against commonality.