Reframing Robert Venturi's Rome with Watercolor

Robert Venturi's Rome is a new book that revisits Robert Venturi's book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture on its 50th anniversary.

The new book by Frederick Fisher and Stephen Harby, both Fellows of the American Academy in Rom, reconsiders Complexity and Contradiction in the form of a guidebook to Rome, and forms a rich framework for re-engaging. Chapter by chapter, the authors revisit key buildings that Venturi cites. With each, they include a piece of Venturi's original text, interpret the text and describe the building. And each building is illustrated with a monochrome watercolor painting. The watercolors are meant to translate the complex buildings into form, mass, space and light. This interpretive method, while sensual in its own right, allows the narrative/reader to focus on the most compelling aspects of each building.

It's hard to underestimate how impactful Complexity and Contradiction can be for young architecture students. For decades students were given Le Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture and Colin Rowe's Mathematics of the ideal Villa as a college freshman.

So it was unsettling for freshly minted modernist converts to confront Complexity and Contradiction. It was both revelation and heresy, a graduate-student level text for top thinkers. But it allows young designers to think about the pleasures or architectural languages, and how they can be manipulated to communicate, to tell stories and create narratives. Like the mature languages that were at the disposal of Michelangelo, Palladio, John Soane, Edwin Lutyens, Paul Rudolph and Anthony Ames. For those designers who are John Hedjuk's "continuators", Venturi suggests a rich path for the creative practice.

This book is not an essential scholarly text. Rather, it's an indulgence, a work of thoughtfulness and beauty for the library of anyone keen on Rome, Robert Venturi, or the art of watercolor sketching.

Travel By Collage - Ireland

These 10 collages, below, are from a Summer 2016 visit to Ireland. I like to make collages as a way to remember things – experiences, places, exhibitions, journeys. As a complement to photographs and drawings, these collages capture the frenzy of travel, and the multi-faceted aspect of unscripted and unpredictable experiences over time. These collages are done in a watercolor sketchbook. They are about 4" x 6" on 5 1/8" x 8 1/8" pages. 

Here is a great description of collage by the late Swiss-born architect and educator Bernhard Hoesli: “First of all we must be clear that by collage one understands, of course, a picture, a type of painting, an object. However, one can also say that this object is the result of a process, a particular kind of approach to shapes, colors and, typically, for collage, scrap paper. So a collage is not only meant as an object, something made, a result, but what is perhaps far more interesting: a process. Moreover, that behind this way of doing something which as a result then leads to a collage, the collage could be meant as an attitude of mind.”

(http://www.cooper.edu/architecture/events/opening-reception-bernhard-hoesli-collages)

Italian Rationalism on Nob Hill

International style modernism arrived late in Northern California. San Francisco got its share of streamlined Art Deco. The California Masonic Memorial Temple on Nob Hill is one of few buildings that show an influence of Italian Rationalism, that very particular version of early 20th century modernism that embraced the colonnade as a central component of its expressive language. At the Masons' hall, a 5 bay wide by 2 bay deep loggia serves as an entry porch for the hall. The orthogonal columns have neither capital nor base. They are smooth shafts of white marble, austere and serious; taut, lean and strong. The building was designed by Albert Roller and dedicated on Sept. 29, 1958.

Vienna

Scanning Slides: Italian Postcards

I finally scanned all of my slides. I had about 1500. Most were from my semester abroad in Italy, and some were from the later 1990's, after school but before the very wide advent of digital photography.

A few things are clear to me looking at my slides. First, I used actual film, so I took far fewer pictures than I do now, since film was costly to buy and develop. I took about 100 pictures per week then, and about 100 per day now when travelling. Second, since I had slide film, I took mostly pictures of buildings and not my friends. This was dumb and a big mistake. Third, it was probably silly to use slide film. But I thought I might end up teaching, and teachers use slides in their lectures, right? Fourth, most of my detail shots are blurry. And any attempt I made to photograph artwork or drawings was a disaster. Fifth, my interior photography was bad, and my night photography was worse, and too many of my pictures are crooked. It might have been the camera, but it was probably the operator, since all of these characteristics plague my digital pictures too.

Last, what was I thinking? I look through the slides, and I wonder, what was I looking at, and why? Why was I compelled by these things, that seem quite a bit less interesting now? I was fascinated by doorways, framed openings, the contrast of darkness and daylight, modern interventions in historic settings, unusual details, and buildings designed by a short roster of deceased architects - and some of these themes still captivate me. I was not very interested in capturing the quality of life and human experiences, like food, shopping, atmosphere, social events, crowds, what it feels like to be there.

Total selfies? Two. Lessons learned? Hopefully more.

What follows are choice pictures from my semester abroad, just over 20 years ago. They are mostly from the cities and towns of Italy. Some are from the bits of traveling during beaks, mostly focused on seeing as many projects by Le Corbusier as possible, those in Paris and those much further beyond the pale. Have you been to Firminy-Vert yet?