Architecture is never an accident. It is a carefully planned out scheme of patterns and styles that respond to natural surroundings, celebrate materiality, and/or are referential of stylistic movements throughout history- all a means of understanding why things are the way that they are. There are different ways to understand how to analyze architecture, through the use of diagrams, patterns, relationships, and proportions to name a few. To both architects and laypeople alike, there’s a subconscious desire for a decision-making structure in design. As a result, architecture has become an exercise in self-positioning- a microcosmic reflection of the world around us as seen in the designs we build.
The Vanna Venturi House is one of the most well iconic homes of the postmodern era, and one of Robert Venturi’s most famous works in his oeuvre. To take a look at the front elevation of the home says much about Venturi’s design intent. It is “loaded with movement” as the exterior elements scale up and down, slide across the facade, compressing, overlapping, and creating different layers of transparency. One of the most famous characteristics of this house is the “dueling shed roofs”, perhaps a historical reference to Moretti’s Casa II Girasole. While these gestures are simple in nature, they collectively show that there was an idea to put many referential elements into a rather small elevation.
The house also appears to be a bit “squat” perhaps referencing the McKim, Mead and White Low House, and considering the double dado, It would be easy to believe that the house has been compressed with one story overlaid on another. The slight cant in the driveway also leaves little doubt that Venturi was referencing the cranked axis from the Propolea to the Parthenon.
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