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Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

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First published in 1966, and since translated into 16 languages, this remarkable book has become an essential document in architectural literature. As Venturi's "gentle manifesto for a nonstraightforward architecture," Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture expresses in the most compelling and original terms the postmodern rebellion against the purism of modernism. Three hundred and fifty architectural photographs serve as historical comparisons and illuminate the author's ideas on creating and experiencing architecture. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture was the winner of the Classic Book Award at the AIA's Seventh Annual International Architecture Book Awards.

136 pages, Paperback

First published March 11, 1957

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About the author

Robert Venturi

27Ìýbooks58Ìýfollowers
Robert Charles Venturi, Jr. is an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major architectural figures in the twentieth century. Together with his wife and partner, Denise Scott Brown, he helped to shape the way that architects, planners and students experience and think about architecture and the American built environment. Their buildings, planning, theoretical writings and teaching have contributed to the expansion of discourse about architecture. Venturi was awarded the Pritzker Prize in Architecture in 1991; the prize was awarded to him alone despite a request to include his equal partner Denise Scott Brown. As of 2013 a group of women architects is attempting to get her name added retroactively to the prize.[1][2] He is also known for coining the maxim "Less is a bore" a postmodern antidote to Mies van der Rohe's famous modernist dictum "Less is more". Venturi lives in Philadelphia with Denise Scott Brown.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
7 reviews2 followers
August 1, 2008
Why is it that the best theorists are architects who just can't seem to design the type of buildings they advocate?
Profile Image for Archer.
63 reviews6 followers
June 26, 2007
Probably my favorite architectural theory book read to date. Very easy to understand the key points, and complete a useful system of analysis and framing. The "dialectical narrative" follows that architecture, as lineage, modernism included (in it's best sense), is complex and contradictory. Finis. The greater point is that this implies many other good things about architecture. Balance. Restraint. Nuance and the subjective experience. The post-modern awful used this as a rallying cry, just as the modern awful used the theories of CIAM/Corbu. Thus it has been unfairly contextualized (no pun) and should be re-read as theory and insight instigator. The biggest mistake in the printing of this book (my opinion of Learning from Las Vegas as well) was putting the built works in the back. If you give idiots something to copy, don't think they won't and make it worse.
Profile Image for Bart.
AuthorÌý1 book127 followers
August 5, 2015
Exceeds even highest expectations. Begins like this (and barely relents):

I like elements which are hybrid rather than "pure," compromising rather than "clean," distorted rather than "straightforward," ambiguous rather than "articulated," perverse as well as impersonal, boring as well as "interesting," conventional rather than "designed," accommodating rather than excluding, redundant rather than simple, vestigial as well as innovating, inconsistent and equivocal rather than direct and clear. I am for messy vitality over obvious unity. I include the non sequitur and proclaim the duality.
Profile Image for Courtney Albertini.
21 reviews
March 16, 2023
Venturi’s ‘gentle� manifesto is a stylistic overthrow of modernism in architecture; a pioneering piece in the shifting debates between modernism and post-modernism of the 1960s. Venturi was one of the first to critique modernist doctrine arguing for a return to the complex and contradictory nature of architecture, turning to 16th century Mannerist and Baroque examples. The highlight on architectural theory and tradition is exciting considering the design world had largely left history behind.

“Where simplicity cannot work, simpleness results. Blatant simplification means bland architecture. Less is a bore.�
Profile Image for Mario.
8 reviews2 followers
December 26, 2021
Ideas y planteamientos revolucionarios para la arquitectura racional y simplificista de la epoca que aún resultan aplicables. Me ha parecido interesante de leer pero tortuoso. Las interminables enumeraciónes de ejemplos, lo mal que escribe el pobre y la horrible traducción al español te hacen pasar un mal rato.
Profile Image for Myles.
614 reviews32 followers
May 5, 2017
Architects often speak in numinous abstractions. It's what's made guys like Kahn and Carlo Scarpa and Aldo Rossi and Alvar Aalto into saints. Though Venturi has many personal idiosyncrasies, he isn't quite so spiritual in his approach to his work. I appreciate his pragmatism in this small but sweeping survey of the relationships between architectural forms.

His approach is encyclopedic and his attention caroms around the globe and between poles on the timeline, from the concentric temple gates at Edfu to the home he built for his mother in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He writes with the passion of an erudite fanboy and you can imagine him sitting people down for drinks and preaching, in quick bursts, the expressive differentiation of the inside and outside spaces of Wright's Johnson Wax Building. Part-analysis, part-manifesto it reads like one of those Renaissance Humanist tomes meant to cap a scholar's lifelong study. Lucky for us, Venturi went on to practice for another half century, producing some of the most memorable, challenging, historically literate works in Postmodernism.
Profile Image for Mohamed.
49 reviews4 followers
December 23, 2012
Every architect or architectural student should read it he gives an outstanding historical review of many architectural ideas.... From the first few pages you will learn that complexity and contradiction in architecture is a good thing, less is abroad, more is good!
Profile Image for Kirsten.
141 reviews1 follower
January 15, 2025
Theoretisch gezien, vind ik dit leuk. De theorieën die hij aankaart en de problemen in de postmoderne architectuur zijn interessant. In de praktijk echter zie ik niet echt hoe hij deze theorieën op zijn eigen werk heeft toegepast. Misschien zie ik andere toepassingen voor de ogen dan hij. Misschien ben ik te gefocust op transhistorische architectuur. Desalniettemin vind ik zijn boeken altijd een slay. Less is a bore? Iconisch. Aldo van Eyck mention doet mijn Nederlandse hart sneller kloppen.

Learning from Las Vegas is tevens een icoon dus dat is de volgende op de lijst.
Profile Image for David Jacobson.
308 reviews16 followers
October 31, 2018
This 1966 work is a response to certain dogmas of modern architecture, especially those that simpler is always better and that form must follow from function. Following a primarily historical line of argument (there are many dozens of photographs of European cathedrals), Venturi makes the case that a building must serve many masters and therefore must do many things: it must accomplish its program on the inside, it must fit in with its surroundings on the outside, it must interface with popular styles and available materials, it must adapt to the future, etc. A building, he argues, cannot achieve all of these things while adhering to the radical simplicity of modern architecture; rather, a successful building must be complex and contradictory (but not overwhelming or distasteful).

This argument is closely related to that of The Timeless Way of Building (Alexander 1979), written about ten years later, which proposes an ideal architectural scheme from first principles as one that satisfies all the competing forces acting on a building. Because The Timeless Way of Building is really more a work of philosophy than of architecture, I found it much easier to read than Venturi's book, which definitely assumes a knowledge of architectural jargon (poché, pediment, etc.) and the work of the major modern masters (especially Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn).

As a non-architect already well-disposed to the main argument from my prior reading, the most interesting part of the book for me was to go through Venturi's critical discussion of various buildings and how he "reads" them as an architect. I never knew, for example, to think of two adjacent and identical buildings not just as symmetrical, but also as a "duality" in need of "resolution".
2 reviews2 followers
September 11, 2012
This book is almost the perfect theory book. It really helps you to understand the post modernism, let alone architecture ,but also postmodernism theory of art, writing, music, etc . The first part is amazingly well writen, very well explained and pretty much aprochable to contemporary design and architecture. The 5 five chapters I think every architect should have in mind when designing. I grew up very fond of this book and Robert Venturi in particular after finishing it, however I believe some of the last pages where all the examples that he lacked madurity at the time of writing and that adorned himself a little to much for my liking. Another con is that sometimes it feels like the author looks way too much into things to prove a simple point. I'd recommend it, though.
41 reviews
January 10, 2024
Venturi is more artist than architect. Through his constant analogies of architecture with poetry, paintings and music, and the words and concepts he uses to describe architecture, he reduces the essence of architecture to something to be seen, rather than to be used. That architecture serves (a) function(s), is secondary.

Ambiguity, for example, is one of the important qualities of architecture according to Venturi. The following are instances of ambiguity he lists as examples: "The Villa Savoye: is it a square plan or not? The size of Vanbrugh's fore-pavilions at Grimsthorpe in relation to the back pavilions is ambiguous from a distance: are they near or far, big or small? Bernini's pilasters on the Palazzo di Propaganda Fide: are they positive pilasters or negative panel divisions? The ornamental cove in the Casino di Pio IV in the Vatican is perverse: is it more wall or more vault? The central dip in Luytens' façade at Nashdom facilitates skylighting: is the resultant duality resolved or not? Luigi Moretti's apartments on the Via Parioli in Rome: are they one building with a split or two buildings joined?"

"Resolving the duality", "inflection", "tension", "simultaneous perception of a multiplicity of levels ivolves struggles and hesitations for the observer, and makes his perception more vivid"... Venturi's analysis is almost entirely about how buildings (including their interiors) are perceived, rather than how they are used. He even explicitly states that perception is of primary importance: "There are probably more ways to use this square [he is talking about his own design for Copley Square] which is "just a grid" than there are to use those which are interesting, sensitive and human. And more important, there are more ways to see it. It is like the intricate pattern of a plaid fabric. From a distance it is an overall repetitive pattern--from a great distance, indeed, it is a plain blur--but close-up it is intricate, varied and rich in pattern, texture, scale and color."

I don't entirely disagree with advocating for complexity and contradiction, or in other words, diversity in architecture. But the purpose of diversity should be that it allows a diversity of uses. This is the position advocated by Herman Hertzberger, whose book "Space and Learning" I highly recommend. Of course some of Venturi's examples of diversity are of the kind that leads to an architecture that serves diverse functions. But many, if not most of the examples are about the composition of facades or of interior details which have a very limited or no impact at all on the actual usefulness of the building/space.
14 reviews
January 6, 2021
I like only to rate books that I consider 5 star contributions to civilization and real blessings for individual persons' lives. But this book has been so influential that I think it needs to be rated.

I think this is one of the most destructive books of the 20th century, because, to be brief, it advocates an architecture of decorating sheds which is to put a mask on persons being condemned to live banality. The alternative is humanistic architecture such as Louis I Kahn practiced and taught. The book: "Between Silence and Light", by John Lobell, presents Kahn's wise and humane (and succinct) thoughts.

To cite just one example of the bad things in C&CinA (I write here from imperfect memory) on either p.114 or 116, Venturi mocks aged Quakers by saying that his GHUILD HOUSE is topped with a gold anodized antenna which is "a symbol for the aged who watch so much television". Not all 80 year old's have Alzheimer's disease and even some of them do better than this. Another item: Venturi disdains Paul Rudolph's Crawford Manor housing for the elderly as a "duck" for having windows in which the residents' plastic flowers do not look good. Not all elderly are caricatures of a superannuated Homer Simpson. Late Yale Professor Paul Rudolph, architect of Crawford Manor, was not a quack. This is just to scratch the surface of this book which also celebrates Mannerist architecture: the architecture of willfully distorted mannerisms.

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture is a must read (5 stars) because we must study what in the past should never again be repeated. This kind of construction of buildings that care not a whit about ennobling persons' spirits but just mock them must be targeted and taken out. To translate the title of an essay by Martin Heidegger: Build in order to dwell in order to think. Know your enemy! Read this book!
164 reviews13 followers
September 24, 2019
A provisional review, because I had to set it down halfway through for moving/new job/etc., so would probably benefit from a re-reading:

I like a lot of Venturi's ideas. There's something very prosaically romantic about embracing architecture's weird little complexities rather than papering over them with grand ideas, and I found myself swept away by his ideas for much of the book. Embrace the expedient, the short-term, the relativistic, the ambiguous, yes please.

But the last section, discussing his work, is a reminder that cogent criticism doesn't necessarily lead to beautiful architecture, and it helps illuminate the shortcomings in one of his statements: "architects should accept their modest role rather than disguise it... The architect who would accept his role as combiner of significant old clichés—valid banalities—in new contexts as his condition within a society that directs its best efforts, its big money, and its elegant technologies elsewhere, can ironically express in this indirect way a true concern for society’s inverted scale of values." There's something intellectually attractive about that, but in the end, it's an argument for ugly architecture as a form of whining about being low-status.

I think the golden TV antenna on top of Guild House is a perfect summation of this � sure, it's funny, but it feels like it's punching down, mocking the building's elderly residents. I'm all for humor, irony, whatever you want to call it, but I needed some more reflection on where that wit should be targeted if you really want to say something meaningful.
Profile Image for Vinicius Mizobuti.
29 reviews2 followers
October 14, 2017
It is a really good book for architects and architecture students, as its main focus is to discuss the idea of how architectural form can produce more meaning through complexity and contradiction than just the simplistic and purist geometry of orthodox modernism.

Venturi statements are bold and clear, strengthned by the first-person structure used to write. Although it is a very brief book, the many examples given by Venturi makes it a longer reading, as you have to look and analyze the drawings and pictures to clearly understand his points, which is a natural thing to do, since his discourse runs mainly around aesthetics. Also, the way he uses examples from traditional and modernist architecture shows that he isn't against modernism, but rather in favor of any architecture that can produce complexity and contradiction.

The last section of the book, on his works, are a way to see how his ideas were translated in the built form, but I think many of his projects don't achieve the same level of complexity as the ones analyzed in the book or the contradiction is just too easy to read, and doesn't add value to the whole.

Regardless, this is a must reading for all of those that want to understand why architecture today is what it is, and as a theorist Venturi is definitely one of the best.
Profile Image for Terry Kearns.
8 reviews8 followers
November 7, 2018
An important work they say. I'm just an architecture enthusiast. Might this have been a more difficult read for a professional? It was difficult enough for me, yet:

I'd read Tom Wolf's "From Bauhaus to Our House" before, which recognizes "Complexity and Contradiction" as a turning point and does a bit of mocking.

I read it as a "stuff I like" book by a famous architect. It's full of too small pictures of extraordinary buildings that I'd never heard of and certainly never seen. He describes them with an academic vocabulary that's probably in Architecture 101. I was kind of getting it as the end. Mostly I wanted to google these buildings to see big pictures of them.

I'm glad I read it, would like to read it again but alas, I don't think I'll have time. "Learning for Las Vegas" is next.
Profile Image for Arend.
780 reviews1 follower
September 11, 2021
Easy to see how this text was a breath of fresh air after the decades of Modernism: "It is the difficult unity through inclusion rather than the easy unity through exclusion." And: "[T]he pictures in this book that are supposed to be bad are often good. The seemingly chaotic juxtapositions of honky-tonk elements express and intriguing kind of vitality and validity, and they produce an unexpected approach to unity as well." The text provides various modes of analysis that even a non-architect like me can understand, although at times he descends into word-salad, where terms become so flexible or distinctions so fine as to be evanescent that I distrust the truth value of the statement. But you can't argue the energy and the joy of the designer conveying the things he sees.
Profile Image for Nabilla Zammali.
94 reviews1 follower
Read
April 13, 2025
His writing skills are close to zero. His analysis of architecture adds new elements to those made by his fellow white men, strictly faithful to western European and North American architecture. He goes beyond his way when mentioning Mediterranean architecture and describing it of course as vulgar, no analysis needed there. His opinion as a white American architect makes it credible. What's there to analyse if not contradiction and complexity itself. No spoiler there.
I also had the misfortune of reading this in a French translation which probably made it worse than it already is.
He should've let Denise Scott Brown help him write this. Honestly, I think it would've been less painful to read.
3 reviews
March 24, 2024
Although the book is widely considered the manifesto of postmodernism in architecture, there are a handful of architectural concepts fully discussed, from the way they were implemented through historical examples to how they would actually relate to the points Venturi is trying to make. Also interesting t0 see how many contemporary terms used in the discipline today (superimposition, juxtaposition etc.) have been first brought to texts and elaborated for the first time in this book. He takes a hard line on giving precise explanation about every example, which makes him convincing but at the same time, slightly tedious to follow. But it still was worth researching on his book and indulging in his invigorating criticism on Modern Architecture.
Profile Image for Carolina Helena.
133 reviews25 followers
February 13, 2019
Mais um da saga "estou a escrever a tese". Livro brilhante, simples mas não simplista. Cem páginas de muito sumo, com reflexões práticas que vertem directamente para o exercício de projecto. Uma aula prática vinda de um grande; a reflexão sobre a arquitectura numa simbiose perfeita com o exercício prático. Essencial.
Profile Image for ben c.
99 reviews
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January 17, 2022
this was on reading list in college...it escaped me although I did actually buy a copy and gave it serious effort.

strikes me as being of a whole load of cobblers, a whole generation of middling designers used this kind of theory to post-rationalise reactionary/rationalism design!

can give headache - avoid
Profile Image for Katri.
657 reviews5 followers
December 28, 2022
I can see how this book is important from a theoretical standpoint. But I'm not a fan of Baroque, Roccoco, or Mannerist architecture, which is what Venturi uses most to illustrate his point. His few examples of Aalto and Le Corbusier helped me understand his theories the best.

Side note: the overuse of the word "violent" really started to bug me.
Profile Image for Gallagher.
156 reviews
February 17, 2024
I don't know a lot about architecture, I probably should have looked up more of the terms I didn't know in here, but now I know what a lintel is and the ideas here are useful as a way to think about art more generally.
Profile Image for Sandro.
30 reviews
July 24, 2020
His arguments are clear and brilliantly written. I just wish I read this book ten years earlier.
Profile Image for ³§´Ç´Úì²¹.
104 reviews7 followers
March 19, 2017
En definitiva este libro debió llamarse "Complejidad y contradicción en la forma Arquitectónica", como el mismo Venturi lo escribió en la nota a la segunda edición del 77. Debo decir que la arquitectura de hoy en día no sería la que es sin el cambio de paradigma del Renacimiento, las invenciones de la revolución industrial y el remate del moderno, porque aunque nos duela aceptarlo luego del moderno no se ha inventado absolutamente nada, se han innovado las técnicas, la rapidez, y la estética se ha convertido en el común de belleza que todos aplauden. Sin embargo, me gustó el análisis critico de Robert, la estructura del libro y sus explicaciones eran objetivas, las comparaciones entre las épocas, la extravagancia del rococó con el sutil menos es mas del moderno.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews

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