A case in point was my rereading this weekend of Mother’s House: The Evolution of Vanna Venturi’s House in Chestnut Hill, an accounting and critical review by Frederick Schwartz, Vincent Scully, and Robert Venturi himself of the design evolution and construction of the house Venturi designed for his widowed mother, Vanna. The book, which I purchased nearly thirty years ago, is one of several in my library dedicated to describing the genesis, design process, and construction of a famous building. I find such books engrossing and relatable, as they not only detail the conceptual underpinnings of the architects’ intentions, but also the unique challenges each project encountered and overcame.
It is hard to imagine today, almost sixty years since its completion, why you should consider the Vanna Venturi house such an important work of architecture. If you were not aware of its historic significance you might not give it a second glance, given how modest and plain it appears among its Chestnut Hill neighbors in northwest Philadelphia. And yet it is significant, perhaps as much as any other single building of the 20th century. It stands as an embodiment of Postmodern architecture at its most intellectual and influential, and historians widely regard it as the movement’s provocatively seminal shot across the bow of Modern architecture.
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In Robert Venturi’s own words, the house:
. . .recognizes complexities and contradictions: it is both complex and simple, open and closed, big and little; some of its elements are good on one level and bad on another; its order accommodates the generic elements of a house in general, and the circumstantial elements of a house in particular. It achieves the difficult unity of a medium number of diverse parts rather than the easy unity of a few or many motival parts.
Rather than further describing Venturi’s design for his mother’s house at length here, I encourage you to watch a six-minute video produced a few years ago by PBS television station WTTW, one of ten segments about buildings that changed America. Host Geoffrey Baer, accompanied by Robert Venturi and his wife and professional partner Denise Scott Brown, provides an engaging and informative tour of the house. Here’s the web link: Vanna Venturi House | Ten Buildings that Changed America | WTTW Chicago.
As Mother’s House documents through the essays by Schwartz, Scully, and the architect, and by means of now-priceless saved drawings and photographs of study models, Robert Venturi spent five years during the late 1950s and early 1960s designing the domestic masterpiece. In reminiscing about the process, Venturi wrote the following:
The little house for a close friend or relative is usually a first opportunity to test theories and expand them. If [the architect’s] practice is slack, this at least allows him to put his heart and soul and a full work week into developing this one small idea, which is always a deepening experience. The years spent refining can be in the nature of a personal odyssey for the architect. It is an opportunity literally to seclude himself in order to focus his thinking.
Venturi did enjoy the luxury of time to lavish upon the project, unconstrained as he was by the need to present a constructable design within a tight timeframe. His mother was in no rush. He was relatively young at the time. He and Scott Brown were not yet married, and both were teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. Venturi did undertake a few professional projects for other clients during this period—the Guild House apartment building for senior citizens most notable among these—but he still was able to largely focus on the design of his mother’s house and embark on his odyssey.
This really is the point of this blog post. Reading Mother’s House once more revived a long dormant yearning to undertake a similar peregrination. Though I am very fortunate to have been a contributor to the success of many important projects, I cannot yet claim to have authored one in a manner that fully tested my own (still developing) theories about architecture. Program, budget, process, and other essential concerns have always clamored for my attention, as does my duty to be a consummate team member. The downside is this comes at the expense of being able to truly think about what I find meaningful about architecture in the service of a real project. My career is so far absent the “deepening experience” Venturi spoke of.(1)
Certainly, a key is the availability of that most precious of resources: time. There never seem to be enough time (or fees) to achieve what Venturi was able to do when designing his mother’s house.
Altogether, Venturi comprehensively developed six distinct designs for the project, all of which are documented chronologically in the book. The evolution of the design over its five-year trajectory is profound. The initial schemes suggest the influence of Louis Kahn, whom Venturi worked for briefly during 1956 and 1957. Whereas those early plans were rigid and symmetrical, the later iterations would increasingly draw upon Venturi’s study of Baroque and Mannerist architecture during his residency at the American Academy in Rome from 1954 to 1956. Ultimately as built, the house proved to be a mature and expansive distillation of Venturi’s architectural theories.
Today, some may consider devoting so much time to exploring arcane design theories a selfish extravagance, an obtuse and tone-deaf insensitivity to issues that today should stand at the forefront of an architect’s concerns and duty to the public. I get it. Fiddling while Rome burns is not a good look. That said, I want to believe the best works of architecture can be functional, economical, sustainable, and just, as well as attentive to design theory, expression, and meaning. To borrow from Robert Venturi, I do not see this as an “either-or” issue; instead, a valid architecture evokes many levels of meaning and combinations of focus.
I’m glad I read Mother’s House again. Doing so reminded me why I find architectural theory and the process of design fascinating. As I said, the book also rekindled a resolve to one day work on a project for which the refinement of essential ideas is not sacrificed at the altar of convenience and exigency. Before my time is done, I want to experience my odyssey—my epic journey—a homecoming to what drew me to architecture in the first place.
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Mother’s House (1992 – Rizzoli International Publications) appears to be out-of-print, though Amazon has copies for sale.
(1) The project I worked on that perhaps came closest to achieving the "deepening experience" was the VA Roseburg Healthcare System Community Living Center. My series of posts "A Case Study" documents that project's conception, design, and execution.
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