Food for thought
Posted on October 14th, 2010 by ryan.
When modern architects righteously abandoned ornament on buildings, they unconsciously designed buildings that were ornament. In promoting Space and Articulation over symbolism and ornament, they distorted the whole building into a duck. They substituted for the innocent and inexpensive practice of applied decoration on a conventional shed the rather cynical and expensive distortion of program and structure to promote a duck… It is now time to reevaluate the once-horrifying statement of John Ruskin that architecture is the decoration of construction, but we should append the warning of Pugin: It is all right to decorate construction but never construct decoration.
-Venturi, Learning from Las Vegas
I’ve never been able to come to terms with Venturi – he simultaneously challenges and disgusts me. It makes me feel a little like a heathen that neither wants to be baptized nor go to hell.
Category: Discussion | Tags: aesthetics, design, humanism, modernism, ornament 5 comments »
November 5th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
One just needs to stand in front of Michal Graves’ Portland Building to understand the implications of decoration on a building. I stood there for the first time last week and Halloween never looked scarier!
November 30th, 2010 at 12:14 am
DUDE, YOU SHOULD GET A PHD.
November 30th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
too much complexity and contradiction for my stomach.
July 25th, 2011 at 2:27 pm
Cool news it is definitely. My teacher has been searching for this update.
February 23rd, 2013 at 8:14 pm
But he’s right.
Taken to extremes we get the current work of Gehry. Are they structure, or are they pure duck?
Or the postmodern distortions of scale ala Graves inhumanly scaled Humana Building. A person feels about as big as an ant on that portico.
Is a decorated shed really evil?