Роберт Вентури — новинки

Осенью 1968 года тринадцать студентов и три преподавателя Йельского университета отправились в экспедицию в Лас-Вегас — мировую столицу вульгарности и плохого вкуса, кошмар архитектора того времени — времени строгих и лаконичных архитектурных форм, социальных амбиций и высокой миссии архитектурной профессии. Итоги скромного студенческого исследования были подведены в работе «Уроки Лас-Вегаса». Настоящая книга — это новое издание классического труда, ставшего главным манифестом постмодернизма. «Уроки Лас-Вегаса» реабилитировали уродливую и заурядную архитектуру и навсегда изменили представления о красоте и функциональности городского пространства.

Вышедшая в 1972 году книга трех архитекторов впервые ввела в широкий оборот слово "постмодернизм". Пока еще не для философов, но именно у Вентури и его товарищей те его вскоре заимствовали. Учиться у поп-культуры, отказаться от строгости форм, сбросить скучный модернизм с корабля, втащить в него обратно модерн и перемешать с "макдональдсом". Кажется, что Вентури с друзьями надо было бы издать по-русски лет двадцать назад. Сейчас их идеи и откровения могут скорее раздражать, чем вдохновлять. Но, с другой стороны, возможность прочитать главный манифест постмодернистской архитектуры заслуживает внимания.

"Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form" created a healthy controversy on its appearance in 1972, calling for architects to be more receptive to the tastes and values of "common" people and less immodest in their erections of "heroic," self-aggrandizing monuments. This revision includes the full texts of Part I of the original, on the Las Vegas strip, and Part II, "Ugly and Ordinary Architecture, or the Decorated Shed," a generalization from the findings of the first part on symbolism in architecture and the iconography of urban sprawl. (The final part of the first edition, on the architectural work of the firm Venturi and Rauch, is not included in the revision.) The new paperback edition has a smaller format, fewer pictures, and a considerably lower price than the original. There are an added preface by Scott Brown and a bibliography of writings by the members of Venturi and Rauch and about the firm's work.

Robert Venturi gehort zu denjenigen Architekten, welche die Debatte uber die Asthetik der Architektur durch Schriften und eigene Projekte wieder in Gang gebracht haben. Sein Buch ist ein Pladoyer zur Wiederaneignung des mannigfaltigen Reichtums der Baukunst, ein Damm gegen die Sintflut von Funktionalitat und Purismus. In einer Anmerkung zur zweiten Auflage dieses Buches vermerkt Venturi: Ich schrieb dieses Buch in den fruhen 60er Jahren als praktisch tatiger Architekt und versuchte, zu einigen Aspekten der Theorien uber Architektur und der Dogmen in der Architektur meinen eigenen Standpunkt zu bestimmen. Heute gelten andere Notwendigkeiten. Ich bin deshalb der Meinung, dass dieses Buch heute wegen seiner allgemeineren Thesen uber das Problem der Form in der Architektur aber auch als zeitgeschichtliches Dokument - vorwiegend mit einer historischen, nicht aber einer praskriptiven Absicht verfasst - gelesen werden kann.

Robert Venturi exploded onto the architectural scene in 1966 with a radical call to arms in "Complexity and Contradiction". Further accolades and outrage ensued in 1972 when Venturi and Denise Scott Brown (along with Steven Izenour) analyzed the Las Vegas strip as an archetype in "Learning from Las Vegas". Now, for the first time, these two observer-designer-theorists turn their iconoclastic vision onto their own remarkable partnership and the rule-breaking architecture it has informed.

The views of Venturi and Scott Brown have influenced architects worldwide for nearly half a century. Pluralism and multiculturalism; symbolism and iconography; popular culture and the everyday landscape; generic building and electronic communication are among the many ideas they have championed. Here, they present both a fascinating retrospective of their life work and a definitive statement of its theoretical underpinnings.

Accessible, informative, and beautifully illustrated, "Architecture as Signs and Systems" is a must for students of architecture and urban planning, as well as anyone intrigued by these seminal cultural figures. Venturi and Scott Brown have devoted their professional lives to broadening our view of the built world and enlarging the purview of practitioners within it. By looking backward over their own life work, they discover signs and systems that point forward, toward a humane Mannerist architecture for a complex, multicultural society.

Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture and Learning from Las Vegas (the latter coauthored with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour) are among the most influential books by any architect of our era -- the one celebrating complexity in architecture, the other the uses of symbolism in commercial and vernacular architecture and signage. This new collection of writings in a variety of genres argues for a generic architecture defined by iconography and electronics, an architecture whose elemental qualities become shelter and symbol.The voice is personal -- eloquent in expounding on the unglamorous side of practice; sometimes vituperative and corrective in addressing clients, theoreticians, and critics; often amusing and humorous in looking back on past projects and opportunities; instructive in describing early influences and tastes; and reflective in assessing his own impact on the profession.The essays include Venturi's 1950 M.F.A. thesis, published here for the first time -- a work that foreshadows many of the themes that were later to make him a controversial and ground-breaking architect and writer -- and a series of vintage Venturi aphorisms.

Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture and Learning from Las Vegas (the latter coauthored with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour) are among the most influential books by any architect of our era -- the one celebrating complexity in architecture, the other the uses of symbolism in commercial and vernacular architecture and signage. This new collection of writings in a variety of genres argues for a generic architecture defined by iconography and electronics, an architecture whose elemental qualities become shelter and symbol. Venturi, who along with his partner, Denise Scott Brown, made the vulgar acceptable and found virtue in the commercial, the kitsch, and the ordinary, is respected equally as a theorist and an architect who communicates his architectural ideas, formal and verbal, with grace and wit. These essays, letters, reports, lectures, manifestoes, and polemical texts offer a candid, uncensored view from the drafting room -- commonsense responses, urgent and diverse, of a busy architect, in part a reaction against the conceptualizing of architecture today invaded by other disciplines and made obscure. Seven of the essays were coauthored with Denise Scott Brown. The voice is personal -- eloquent in expounding on the unglamorous side of practice; sometimes vituperative and corrective in addressing clients, theoreticians, and critics; often amusing and humorous in looking back on past projects and opportunities; instructive in describing early influences and tastes; and reflective in assessing his own impact on the profession. The lead essays can be described as an argument embracing reference and representation in our information age, whose technical basis is truly of our time and whose iconographic basis derives from a long tradition in architecture including hieroglyphic Egyptian pylons, early Christian basilicas, scenographic Baroque interiors, and even eclectic Romantic architecture and twentieth-century electronic signs and displays. The essays include Venturi's 1950 M.F.A. thesis, published here for the first time -- a work that foreshadows many of the themes that were later to make him a controversial and ground breaking architect and writer -- and a series of vintage Venturi aphorisms.

First published in 1966, and since translated into 16 languages, this remarkable book has become an essential document of architectural literature. A "gentle manifesto for a nonstraightforward architecture," Venturi’s 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.

Learning from Las Vegas created a healthy controversy on its appearance in 1972, calling for architects to be more receptive to the tastes and values of "common" people and less immodest in their erections of "heroic," self-aggrandizing monuments.

This revision includes the full texts of Part I of the original, on the Las Vegas strip, and Part II, "Ugly and Ordinary Architecture, or the Decorated Shed," a generalization from the findings of the first part on symbolism in architecture and the iconography of urban sprawl. (The final part of the first edition, on the architectural work of the firm Venturi and Rauch, is not included in the revision.) The new paperback edition has a smaller format, fewer pictures, and a considerably lower price than the original. There are an added preface by Scott Brown and a bibliography of writings by the members of Venturi and Rauch and about the firm's work.

First published in 1966, and since translated into 16 languages, this remarkable book has become an essential document of architectural literature. A "gentle manifesto for a nonstraightforward architecture," Venturi’s 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.