Ducks and Decoration by Denis Scott Brown and Robert Venturi - Assignment Example

Proposal: Ducks and Decoration Proposal: Ducks and Decoration This proposed presentation primarily focuses on interactions which take place between those who come up with a work piece and those who study it, the practitioners and the theorists, which is a typical characteristic like the others of this panel. Thus, they are not exclusive characterizations. Particularly focusing on my project, we will see an adversarial (or mostly seems that way) interaction between practitioners/theorists. My project will focus on the work titled, Ducks and Decoration by Denis Scott Brown and Robert Venturi. The vastness of the reference material which Venturi produced is good because it pertains a variety of issues involved when it comes to confronting a term like postmodernism, which constitutes many tangents and a voluminous paper. My focus in the presentation will be on the issue which inspired this project. When analyzing Ducks and Decoration, we see that Robert Venturi believes that there is a prevalent misconception concerning his work. So how did this come about? The concern is, at very least, challenging to layout and attack methodically as it usually is with most things related with the term Postmodern. The complexity is in the fact that the word and what it explains are used in a vast number of ways. People avoided using the term at all in scholarship which was actually most helpful due to its amorphous nature. Its imprecision really doesnt assist with your point if you are scrupulous. The term postmodern means something rather particular when one is talking about architecture. Postmodern, in the most usual parlance when describing an architectural style which means a style on or of a building built in the past 40 years which incorporates references to past non-modern styles, usually the classical. We can site a very common example of what is architecturally and stylistically postmodern; this is the 80s pastel. This is a classical ornament covered Plaza d Italia located in New Orleans which is the work of Michael Graves. This proposal sheds some light on what it we refer to by ducks and decoration, which basically being an architect is working in a postmodern style. Presentation: Ducks and Decoration By Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown Ducks and decoration is on the basis of postmodernism and perhaps it will come out as very surprising and interesting to know that in the September 2001 issue of Architecture magazine, titled postmodernism, Robert Venturi, who is known to be prolific and groundbreaking architect with a legacy assured, among his notable achievements is being the winner of the Pritzker Prize and former professor of architecture at Penn and Princeton Universities, came out and said that he was never a Postmodern architect, and also denied creating the movement. This was a very surprising thing. This is because he is generally regarded as having initiated the revival of the use of classical ornament on buildings. It was he together with his wife and partner Denis Scott Brown who it appears that they made it ok to start using historical styles creating postmodernism. This fact is widespread and understood. In the article he cites what he considers to be a misconception. As written in the 1997 New York Times by Herbert Muschamp, which Venturis first groundbreaking work of theory "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture" enabled architects to once again draw upon the historical styles" However, Venturi unequivocal disagrees when he said. His denial sends the understanding of postmodernisms paternity in disarray. A notable academic in the field of architecture, wing who is from Princeton University in a symposium made remarks which associated Venturi with big trends in academic architecture: As rightfully noted by Dean Maxwell, that the application of semiotics to architecture has its roots in the sixties which were given a remarkable boost by Learning from Las Vegas. This notorious 1972 manifesto was Robert Venturis work praising the semantic opulence of the urban strip. It was no doubt that it was Venturi who crossed semiotics and communication producing Postmodernism." What can perhaps be regarded to as one of the most significant postmodern founding recognitions comes from New Directions in American Architecture (1977) which is a Postscript to Robert A.M. Stem’s. This is another architect whose work is construed as Postmodern who says that "Venturi and Charles W. Moore are the founders of post-modernism in their emphasis on meaning and their identification of the discord between a reductive architecture and a complex culture." This continues to the chagrin of Venturi. This couple Venturi and Scott brown started their careers inculcated in architectural modernism. Later on Venturi and Scott Browns careers became reactions countering modernist roots, tried to undermine the prevailing modernist ideologies of the architectural academies and establishment. The two books which they were to do their critiques were learning from Las Vegas and Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. They tried to apply their innovative ideas in their own built work. Glancing through their early work, we should try to catch a glimpse of this debate by coming to Robert Venturis first sizeable theoretical work which is Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. What do we understand by Complexity and Contradiction? And why is it special? Complexity and Contradiction was the outcome of Venturis teaching at Princeton, and was published in 1966.1 1Robert Venturi, Complexity and contradiction in architecture (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1977), 43. Here, the content was more of the result of his independent research as a fellow at the American Academy in Rome, attaining his exposure to Italian Architecture. The purpose of the book was to be a scathing critique of the modern style. Here we see many different attacks. All of modem architecture Venturi characterizes them as orthodox, lifeless, and claims that regardless of all the utopian rhetoric that was used to advocate it, it never delivered on its promises that actual problems could be solved by designs. International style abstraction could be similar everywhere. It was supposed to make it relevant everywhere, however Venturi says thats what makes it loose its relevance and even though all the cant regarding form that follows function it did not get the job done. According to Venturi architecture catering to its place is the architecture which serves people best while architecture which is simple in the abstract but at the same time complicated, incongruous, plural, puzzling and self-effacing is most interesting and artistic. Venturi visually makes his point mainly through the use of historical architecture. When he made his point through his designs one could easily see that there was a great deal of power in Venturis wit. Venturi and Scott Brown have begun a number of studios as part of their achievements. This produced Learning from Las Vegas. The things that are so fascinating about learning from Las Vegas are the analysis of the new architecture rising from the flat, sprawling desert. The conclusions drawn from this study are very interesting as compared to others. Once again Scott Brown and Venturi drew distinctly anti-modem conclusions. Now this is where they came to the conclusion that buildings could be either Ducks or Decorated Sheds. They expressed that the form of the buildings were generic but incorporated signage in the expression of what they were, respectively. A distinction was drawn between the heroic/modern as well as the ordinary/ugly and came up with a revolutionary conclusion that ordinary was a good thing, that it was not a must for all buildings to be full of geometric form, clean lines in order to be well considered as well designed. So, I pose this question, is the critical establishment attributing Postmodernisms birth to Venturis theory accurate? Is Venturi correct? We can once again take Muschamps claim that Intricacy and Inconsistency permitted architects license to use historical styles again. Can it be true? It is not necessarily true since Venturi accurately points out that the architecture he backs isnt just old architecture, but rather he values the kinds of modem architecture employing both context as well as paradox with ambiguities in their designs. So, when it is said Complexity and Contradiction, it does not mean advocating for historical styles but rather advocating for modern architecture which cannot be termed as orthodox.Infacte most of what passes Venturi considers as pastel, and it was 1980s and early 1990s architecture which happens to constitute a column or a pediment as modem architecture which is bad. Yet at the same time, can we claim that Muschamps claim is crazy? That is not possible; an architect could not have been at a position to practice bad postmodern architecture devoid of Venturis preliminary criticisms when it comes to orthodox modem. Is it so absurd to claim that if his critique was nonexistent, that the postmodern architects would have incase been modem architects? Next assertion is whether Venturi applied Semiotics to Architecture and if he applied the vogue Linguistic studies. Criticism of modern architecture was the main thrust of his work, what is possibly regarded to as their use of literary theory is basically 2 pages of Learning from Las Vegas where there are mentioning of connotation and denotation as ways for interpretation of actual signs, and another 3 where essays of George Baird, Charles Jencks, and Alan Colquhoun are cited. This is the last time that Venturi applies literary theory to any of his work, which is in complete contrast to architects like Peter Eisenmen and Bernard Tschumi who took up post structuralism and deconstructivism. The first theorists to apply these literary theories to architecture though with limited success were Baird and Jencks. In order for this practice to have attained acceptability it means that there would be accommodation by society of a high degree of displacement of culture. It is Venturi’s theory, in past perspective which makes it palatable in an aesthetic way although the tightening events which were occurring over last third of the twentieth century may have significantly contributed to that phenomenon. It is as a result of employing a format belonging to one building type being incorporated for an entirely different purpose that results in cultural layering. It is the practice of adaptive reuse, which is also the ability to allow different cultural aspects, which is one of the most far-reaching aspects of Venturis influence, which shows up in the emergence of an entirely new situation in architecture. It is also important to understand exactly what cultural layering is. Social layering happens as a consequence of utilizing a configuration which unmistakably fits in with one building sort which is joined for a fully distinctive reason. This is when conspicuously disjointed period styles are assembled in premises. A good example can be the adaptive reuse of a railway station as a restaurant. This creates tension in culture, thus sending disparate messages about function, which is in conflict between the obvious or initially intended purpose of format and the transformation. Operative principles are closely opposite to those applying to restoration of history. Preserving the authenticity of the original design is not a prerequisite. However one should ensure that the alterations do not obliterate the original identity thus disparate associations of the building regarding its new function. In the late 1960s and 1970s, modern architecture reigned supreme. The then buildings were often in form of concrete which everyone seems to be trying so hard to preserve. What Venturi questioned was whether the crux of modernism was quite as clothed as people had thought. When we see the magnitude of the influence of his work then we are able to see that his book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture that was published in 1966 was for architects as what Jane Jacobs’s Death and Life of Great American Cities was for city planners: and that is the book that revolutionized the orthodoxy. Venturi posed that modern buildings were plain and that they sought a purity which most architectural history refuted. Great buildings were viewed rather as complicated responses to a variety of situations, rather than just pieces of abstract sculpture which are unresponsive to their surroundings as claimed by Venturi. He later on he went ahead and designed buildings that demonstrated what he had in mind. They were neither modern nor traditional in the sense that we had understood modern architecture to be. As modern as he was, Venturi aspired to make buildings that were designs of his time. He viewed his time as something different from the revolutionary era fantasized about by modernists to having been living in. There is the house in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, which he specially designed for his mother became something of an icon: this house joins the thin, lightness of modernism with the notion of a gable, and it looks almost, but not quite, perhaps can be described to be like a child’s drawing of a house. However a couple of things are off kilter, and is devoid of something soft or sentimental about it. His design for the National Football Hall of Fame, however it was not built, was called the “Bill-ding Board,” Venturi had envisioned a small, hurdled display hall behind a gigantic sign which was supposed to show pictures of renowned football plays in lights. The building was smaller than the sign, while the message decades before the work of his predecessors who have explored the connection between media and architecture was that constructed space would be triumphant over electronic imagery .Although this was conceived long prior to having the vast television screens, it served as the beginning of the concept of virtual space. To conclude, in this project I have discovered that Venturi is rather an insightful critic, of what was and still remains, to Venturis irritation is the prevailing dominance of modem architecture. However he is on point when he asserts that his work did not produce the stylistic trend, but rather his denial of his participation in it is false. Though there are much more complex issues which are inherent in historical modernism and postmodernism are far .It is much more than simply movement and reaction. Venturi was integral to the discovery that architectural postmodernism was regarded to as a reaction against architectural modernism. It can be accurately assumed based on the above research that what Venturi is aware of, yet is believed, not willing to admit too publicly is that regardless of its normative content architecture and their theories as well as all of its academic pretensions are merely issues of fashion. It is basically an issue of out and in and dated and current, however the architects simply arent willing to admit it.2 2Robert Venturi, Iconography and electronics upon a generic architecture: a view from the drafting room (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998), 23. Works Cited Venturi, Robert. Complexity and contradiction in architecture. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1977. Venturi, Robert. Iconography and electronics upon a generic architecture: a view from the drafting room. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998. Read More