Robert Venturi

DYWSC? would have loved to be there at the recent Robert Venturi lecture at IIT. Repeat and A Daily Dose both brought to our attention this report about the man on fire...

“We’re in the information age. We’re also in the electronic age . . . and to make architecture look like industrial buildings and to make architecture be abstract is no longer appropriate. The architecture that’s being built today is this awful historical revival—the neomodern modern revival. They’re being just as historical in their revival as they would be if they were reviving Renaissance architecture or Gothic architecture.” Venturi, who’s championed the idea of buildings as “decorated sheds,” said Frank Gehry’s Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park was carrying on “the idea of the great American loft tradition. His buildings . . . are essentially a loft with applied ornament, which are these potato chips”—a reference to the billowing metallic forms around the stage. “So I feel at home when you acknowledge that his architecture is not only the potato chips, but the potato chips applied to a loft. And Frank was more than happy when I said that.”