Response to Robert Venturi's ideas on Post-Modern Architecture

The idea of the “Duck and the Decorated Shade” is used as architectural iconographies to illustrate the central Post-Modernist theory proposed by Robert Venturi that a building embody the “both-and” doctrine - in many cases being both “complex” and “contradictory” at the same time (such notions would be discussed in the latter part of the response).  In this regard, “the Duck”, a comparison towards the “Long Island Duckling” Drive-in structure, is used to describe an architectural system of space, structure, and programmed are fused into and therefore shaped by a symbolic and sometimes a performative form. In contrast, “the Decorated Shed” to describe an architectural system whereby the structure directly serves its function, and ornament is independently applied to mark its program or purpose. The two terms can be made more clear through a comparison between two buildings built during similar times: Robert Venturi’s Guild House and Paul Rudolph’s Crawford Manor. The first difference that one will notice is the fact that the Guild House is heavily ornamented while the Manor is not.The stripes of white brick placed high on the building nod towards the style of Renaissance Palazzo and the scale of the central space to the whole building adds to the same effect. Its non-functional arched window and the gold-plated antennae at the top are nothing but symbolic ornaments. Unlike the Guild House, the Manor uses minimal decoration, its design based on its use as a residential. The Manor therefore, can be catagorised as a duck while the Guild House is the “Decorated Shed”. 

The “Duck” is described by Robert Venturi as “heroic and original”, as the design is straightforward and so is not a result of an attempt to be something that it is not

Like the “Duck”, the Aalto’s Imatra Church is again, an architectural embodiment of its use as a church with acoustic properties. A structure whose minimalist look does not match its internal complexities which are governed by the way that the church is going to be used. Such property is highly valued by Venturi, as it fits into his concept of “genuine complexity” - an idea that the simplicity should be the result of behind- the-scene complexity, otherwise, the design would be rendered to only be bland. Rather, like Alto’s Church whose curved ceiling spaces allows for a better acoustic property in the building, architecture itself should address its program. Such performative work would be especially true if we were to look at contemporary architecture such as Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67, whose fragmented geometry speaks of a dense accumulation of residential unit that, in this design, are integrated benefits of suburban homes, namely privacy, fresh-air, and multi-level configuration.

Robert Venturi’s idea of post-modernist architecture is not unlike that which embodies INDA’s student project of “Erotic Architecture”, for the work seeks to create a space which, in its own right, performs a particular task- arousing the senses. Like a “Duck”, the intervention is immersive and puts architecture in the limelight. The work is particularly true to Venturi’s conception of simplification and complexity, as the output of the installation only deals with the senses in its purest form (a simplification of sensory experience to its purest level). However, behind it is a plethora of design and set-up planned weeks before, a complexity that are, during the show, hidden away and not seen but are vital to the effectiveness of the installation.

The Movement that follows the International Style: A Response

The period following the rise of the world-acclaimed “International Style” sees a multitude of architects who, despite the anti-bourgeoisness of the “International style”, chooses to, in their design, create curved surfaces ,draw inspirations from their surroundings and identify each project’s individual needs. Many reflected on Le Corbusier’s conception of what is a beautiful architecture. For this essay, we will specifically discuss the work of Louis Kahn and its implication.

Born in 1901, Louis Kahn proves to be yet another unique designer who draws inspiration from his travel experiences. It is not hard to detect the inscription of the Buddhist Stupa, the Mongul’s Taj Mahal, and the Italian Castel del Monte in Kahn’s National Assembly Building of Bangladesh. Originally meant to be monumental, Kahn’s use of cyclopean-sized geometry transcends the long-running question asked by his predecessor- what is bourgeois and what is not. 

RESPONSE TO JACQUES TATI'S "PLAYTIME"

Jacques Tati’s Playtime’s explores the rapid modernization of Paris and its dehumanisation effect. The city Hulot was in, often dubbed “Tativille”, is symbolic of the architectural and urban configuration which aims to systematise the lifestyle of people in such fashion that would have Le Corbusier nodding his head -  “a machine in the garden”, that is. This ethos presumes that building is a design result of function - to allow inhabitation of human - and so the house became a cube which only serves its sole purpose. Governing human patterns that inhabit it, this machine, just like any other, soon proves itself to be less than failure-proof. In his journey through this unfamiliar Utopian landscape, Hulot sees a spectacular struggle of human trying to remain humanistic in a perversely homogenized environment that is supposedly avant-garde.

The Spartan grid arrangement is used extensively in the film, as can perhaps, seen as the source of many of the problems caused to its inhabitants. For example, when Hulot arrived in the office and was trying to navigate his way through to the meeting room, he finds it near-impossible to differentiate between the plenitude of identical cubicles forming a grid-like maze in an open-floor plan. This homogeneity is also expressed in the office workers themselves as all wears the ever-present black suit and tie - a result of the reduction of individual expression of taste that would also be evident in the residential unit scene.

In this scene, Hulot meets an old friend in an ultra-modern, glass-fronted flat. This flat is, yet, another embodiment of the building philosophy laid out by Le Corbusier and Mies Van de Rohe - that a house only represents the domestic behaviours of the users - a form reduced to serves only its intended function. In this way, the flat became just that- a flat cell that is near-impossible to tell apart if not for its fishbowl windows that allows us to see right through to the lives of the resident living inside. This very fishbowl display design, however, highlights the impersonal and stark quality of modern architecture.

The obstruction of modern design to human behaviour is perhaps, most evident in the night club scene. Here, Hulot is ending his day in a dinner club partially under-construction. Ergonomic problems is shown here straight-on: glass doors shatter, customers fell off barstools and their movement obstructed by a raised floor section, waiter’s uniform are repeatedly ripped by the furniture.

In the end, it seems that the grid structure intended to shepherd citizen in which this “Tativille” is arranged in falters to the natural fluidity of human movements. “I am not at all against modern architecture”, said Tati in an interview, “I only think that as well as the permit to build, there should also be a permit to inhabit.” Indeed, even though the machines that Le Corbusier keep mentioning might establish a framework for an efficient and economic, even beautiful, architecture, what is inevitable in the composition would always be the synchronicity of the design to its users that are ever-dynamic, unpredictable, and remarkably- human.

Criticisms on the Development of Modernism and the Architecture of Mies Van De Rohe

Like the cyclicality of an Ouroboros whose jaws are constantly eating up its own tail, the conception of architectural theory can many times round up upon itself in a self-contradicting manner, as can be exemplified by the Seagram Building by the modernist avant-garde Mies Van de Rohe. 

As stated by Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus movement, architecture is beautiful in its state of absolute-non-bourgeoisity, a condition in which a building is made with function in mind and is therefore a rendition of “worker’s housing”. Of course, as outlined by Tom Wolfe, variations of the concept, proposed by the then-leading architects, became a weapon of competition, a way to say my house is more beautiful than you - I am better than you. Not surprisingly, this leads to an incredible vicissitudes of buildings built to illustrate “my” theory. What first started out as a pure and flat architecture of the Bauhaus became, in its ultimate embodiment, the Seagram building by Mies Van de Rohe. But what, as we have said, is the Ouroboroic quality, or rather, ironies, can such architecture pose to its precedents. To understand this better let us look at the essay “Ornament and Crime” by Adolf Loos, which supplements the Bauhaus followers with all the more reasons to reject decorations. In it, Loo argues that ornament causes an inefficiency in economy, as it takes more, says, time, to produce an ornamented object compared to an unornamented one. However, this essay also implies the use of honest structure in buildings because of the absence of decoration. This very concept became the origin of the paradox of design behind the Seagram building. A skyscraper demands a structural construction made with concrete-covered steel, and so to Van de Rohe, this is a lie, as the structure is covered up. To solve this problem, he put I-beams on the facade of the building to express its inner materiality, in effect, putting on ‘decoration’, the much dreaded object of the modernism movement. The tinted glass and the granite pavement also became an instrument of ornamentation and of excess due to its high cost and the labour hours that is consumed during its production. 

“Less is more” was Mies’ oft-repeated aphorism. It seems that in the end, the phrase turned itself into an irony of literal translation- by saying ‘less is more’, Mies is doing just that by adding more ornaments to a ‘reduced’ architecture.