2 comments about Architecture as Signs and Systems: For a Mannerist Time (The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization).

1. It is difficult to imagine an architect more genuinely American than Robert Venturi. His Americaness consists in a horizontal vision of history, in a method that embraces case data as its system, and in an obstinate realism with regards to the punctilious registration of the material furnished by daily life . This is well summarised in one of the two slogans on the back cover: "Evolutionary Pragmatism rather than Revolutionary Ideology." Architecture as Signs and Systems can be considered as a kind of "scientific autobiography" by Venturi and Scott Brown.
   The couple from Philadelphia develops the theories contained in their preceding books in the light of their own projects, which are presented here as being demonstrative. It is not easy to distinguish the personal contributions coming from an association that has lasted longer than that of Burnham & Root. Thanks to the book's autobiographical confessions, the decisive influence that Denise Scott Brown had on her husband now emerges completely.
   A South African architect and urban planner, Scott Brown was trained in Europe. The interests they have in common for functionalism, industrial architecture from Modernism's beginnings, and the social and urban context of design are the fruits of her apprenticeship at Architectural Association in London. London was the new pulsating centre for post-war architectural culture. It was also the capital of the Modernist Architectural Movement's internal criticism, spawning the Brutalism of which Alison and Peter Smithson (and Team X in general) were primary exponents. Above all, it was Scott Brown's fascination with South African folk art incorporating Western imagery (frowned upon by purists) that prepared Scott Brown for the impurity of Las Vegas, allowing us to understand the other slogan featured on the back cover: "Serious beauty may lie in what you see and can't, at first, accept."
   Scott Brown's influence on Venturi was legible as early as 1966, with the publication of Venturi's brilliant manifesto Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, ending with a picture of a billboard-lined street. It is a known fact that Learning from Las Vegas (1972) is based more on her urban studies than his theoretic and historical research. However, Venturi's realism comes from his interest in all that is ordinary and, above all, vernacular. Without doubt, Pop Art was one of the fundamental basis for his vision of architecture as a means of communication for the multiculturalism of the present and future world. This brings him to see Times Square and certain areas of Tokyo (dominated by enormous electronic screens relentlessly bombarding pedestrians and motorists with information and advertising) as a Saint Mark's Square of our times. It is impossible to not see Ed Ruscha's Twenty-six Gasoline Stations (1962) behind today's annoying electronic panels with their giant connotative Venturian writing. Moreover, being a Realist in the USA cannot be the same as in Europe, as Ruscha so clearly stated: "I don't have any Seine River like Monet. I just have U.S. 66 between Oklahoma and Los Angeles." One of the book's theoretic centrepieces is indicated by its subtitle "for a Mannerist time".
   After all the isms (Modernism, Post-Modernism, Deconstructivism, etc.) it is time for a new Mannerism in architecture that recognises conventional order instead of original expression, and that recognises and looks for ambiguity for a new era of complexity and contradiction. If it is true that there is no clear and exhaustive definition of Mannerism, as Venturi reminds us by quoting Arnold Hauser, it is also true that Venturi's definition remains quite weak. In reality, the book does not make a fresh proposal. Venturi has written definitions of it on more than one occasion, but here the analysis suffers, possibly due to its autobiographical character and the short pamphlet-like format of its essay.
   It remains anchored at the level of slogans, counting on historical examples and several of their own projects to provide all additional specifications. This is a shame, because ever since Mannerism returned as a central theme in international artistic culture around the mid-Sixties, very little repositioning has taken place (concerning architecture) with respect to definitions like the one given by Manfredo Tafuri in Mannerist Architecture of 16th-Century Europe, which was published, incidentally, exactly in 1966: "A cultural practice able to extend its tools and means of communication, attain experimental values through the emancipation of experience, install consultation with history, and lastly, to be based on open and semantically polyvalent linguistic structures."
   More recently, Giorgio Agamben noted how Mannerism possesses an almost elective affinity with nihilism, and it is certainly no coincidence that Rem Koolhaas, "who enjoys flying a trapeze across the Olympus", described Venturi and Scott Brown's office as being part of his genealogy, despite the irreducible differences between them. Koolhaas personally interviewed the couple in his latest book Content (2004).
   In any case, Architecture as Signs and Systems has the great merit of offering a strong theoretic basis that took shape during a historical period that saw casual pragmatism prevail in architecture and the absence of structured theoretic constructions in just about all disciplines. Moreover, it has the merit of going counter current by explicitly focusing on the taboo subject of form, a theme greatly opposed by new carefree post-critical generations. Aldo Rossi, an architect that Venturi never mentions, defined the designer's task with clarity in 1966 (the same fateful year of his treatise The Architecture of the City): "I think that the first principle of a theory is the insistence on a few themes. I think that it is particularly typical of artists and architects that they focus on a theme to explore, to work on a choice issue from architecture and to keep wanting to resolve that issue."
   
   Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, in the course of their long and mostly solitary career, have carried out this task with courage and responsibility. It is especially their example that they convey in this book, as a legacy of our times.
   
   (Published on "Domus" no. 883, July/August 2005, pp. 106-107)



2. This book is a pleasure to read. The words taste almost of chocolate. It is the best book by Venturi, Scott Brown since Learning from Las Vegas. Whether you are an architect, interested in architecture, or just their ideas, you won't be disappointed.

No comments about Verb Conditioning: Architectural Boogazine (Architecture Boogazine).

4 comments about Venice & the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture 1100-1500.

1. Venice is nothing like the rest of Italy ... everyone can see this ... instead of looking below the surface most people just describe it as "magical" . Having been there numerous times, it has clear influences from the Islamic world. I also have not seen much that is truely Gothic in the rest of Italy for that matter ... Milano Cathedral being the only real example I've seen.
   
   This is a very good book, and anyone who believes that Gothic (with its pointed arches, etc) is not derived from Islamic architecture needs to do some travelling (outside of Europe), and stop believing in magic.
   
   Tourists heading to Venice should read this book - and "A History of Venice" by J.J.Norwich and look at the photos (not text - which was translating by Babelfish methinks) in "Palaces of Venice" by A.Fasolo.
   
   You will then know that it was a maritime empire populated by entrepreneurial merchants, that made loads of money from having a virtual monopoly of the spice trade from the east (Islamic countries) to Europe, to fund the building of all these great buildings.
   
   This all came to an end when Portugal found another way to the east and bypassed Venice. Not unlike Hong Kong being bypassed by Shanghai today.



2. The importance with books of this sort, is dont get carried away. Islam is a big question today, and intercultural history is a top priority, but accuracy should always trump political fads. Venice is by far a city of Byzantine and Gothic, much less Islamic influence. The book fails to make this sufficiently clear, and can leave the reader with the impression that Venice, and the Renaissance had Oriental roots. This is plain wrong.



3. Deborah Howard is steeped in the enigma of Venetian architecture and gives a fabulous interpretation of its development through trading relationships with the Islamic world from 1100-1500 AD.
   
   By emphasising the mental `Transmission and Propagation' of Islamic imagery as much as any materialistic one through trade, Howard shows just how elastic the `process of cultural diffusion' was and restores the importance of the oral tradition in the `reformulation' of that imagery into another space and time.
   
   Her focus on the Middle East draws our attention away from Constantinople, bringing out the importance of Alexandria as one of the main sources of cultural inspiration.
   
   In a vivid example of a rescued and transformed architectural motif, Howard mentions at length the lighthouse Pharos of Alexandria. This wonder of the ancient world was still standing when Islam spread across the North African coast and its secular function as a light in dark places became a potent spiritual symbol with the slimmed down rise of many a minaret.
   
   The offspring of Pharos continued to multiply with Venice contributing several of its own; the last example, Codussi's campanile for the cathedral church of San Pietro di Castello with, `its snow-white ashlar masonry . . . stands at the eastern end of the city, as a beacon for the sea borne traveller from the east.'
   
   The Great Umayyed Mosque in Damascus also gets singled out for special attention as does the Abbasid and Fatimid periods in general, with their legacy of impressive building projects that impacted upon the mind of many a Venetian merchant.
   
   Howard reminds us how the papal ban on trade with Moslems became more than just a tiresome irritant for the Venetians. With so much lucrative trade at stake, the essence of its survival, good relations with the Moslem Middle East were a necessity; in Cairo for example, `only Venetian gold ducats are accepted currency.'
   
   Venice also became a facilitator in pilgrim traffic to Jerusalem and it is the combination of so many of those factors that makes Deborah Howard's narrative so interesting. With splendid photographs and maps to reinforce her view, we look at Venice with fresh eyes while the ghost of bygone Alexandria dazzles, mirage like, before us.
   
   The ripe old civilisations of the east were infused with much positive creativity in the wake of Islamic conquests: Howard's narrative helps dissolve the rigid and outdated paradigm of a `clash of civilisations,' revealing a grudging sense of admiration by many a Christian merchant and pilgrim who stood witness to Islamic ways of life and became transmitters of that imagery back to Venice.
   
   An unusual book: Highly recommended!



4. Clearly one of the best art books of the year, Venice and the East traces the impact of Islamic art on the Venetian imagination -- as evident in its architecture. Though stunning illustrations that compare Venetian and Islamic architecture and a well-written text based on primary sources, author Deborah Howard shows that, in the heyday of Levantine trade, Venetian merchants brought back more than spices and cotton from the Islamic world. They also brought back visions of paradise: Islamic styles in gardens, courtyards and palaces that evoked not just Eastern sensuality but also biblical grandeur and spirituality. Although Howard gives ample attention to the borrowing of specific architectural motifs -- balconies, crenellated walls and ogee windows -- she goes well beyond a cataloging of borrowed style. This is, most of all, a study in cultural assimilation -- of ideas as much as architectural form -- and is well worth treasuring whether your passion runs to architecture, history, sociology, or more simply: to gorgeously illustrated coffee table books.

No comments about The Beehive Metaphor : From Gaudi to Le Corbusier.

No comments about Inventing American Modernism: Joseph Hudnut, Walter Gropius, and the Bauhaus Legacy at Harvard (Center Books).

No comments about Skyline: The Narcissistic City (Cultural Memory in the Present).

No comments about Multi-National City: Architectural Itineraries.

1 comments about The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Expression.

1. This by far the best research I have read on the subject of architecture. Suzanne Blier takes a holistic and scholarly approach. The writing is clear with excellent references that have proven very helpful. The photography and illustrations are informative. Anyone with a serious interest in West African art, sociology, language, religion and architecture in general should read this book.

No comments about Perspecta 37 "Famous": The Yale Architectural Journal (Perspecta).

4 comments about A Guide to the Architecture of St. Louis.

1. This has been the reputed de facto standard for St. Louis architecture. As one who has such as an interest as a hobby, I am more than thrilled to learn from the information this book provided. My understanding is that a possible update may one day present itself...I hope so.



2. St. Louis is an architectural treasure, much like many of our other rust-belt cities. Cleveland, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh also fall into this category. These cities retain much of their old classical buildings from a time when the idea of grand public architecture meant something to the eye and was a source of civic pride. St. Louis is a fine example of this idea, and a real treat for American urban architecture lovers. The book itself is quite dated, published in 1989, but the authors do an excellent job of choosing the structures they know we will want to see. All the classics are here, all with at least one photograph and a nice descriptive essay. Also, the authors have taken the time to bring us many of the most interesting old structures from the surrounding towns as well. A new addition would be a real treat.



3. I remember the first time I visited St. Louis, I was expecting a run down, dirty, industrial mess, much like Detroit, so you can imagine my surprise with what I found. I loved the city, it was clean and quite beautiful, especially the area around Forest Park. This book does a fine job of capturing the St. Louis I experienced, I especially appreciated that every entry is accompanied with a requisite photo, that should be de riguer in a book of this sort. This book is divided up and it covers not just the city, but the environs, which is essential. If you have any interest in St. Louis, or quite frankly if you have any appreciation in architecture then you will not be disappointed in this wonderful book.



4. This is one of the best guidebooks for a city's architecture I've seen. The entries cover not only St. Louis proper but also the entire metro area, reaching far into the suburbs in both Missouri and Illinios. Every entry has at least one photograph, a rarity for such books. The maps are clear and concise; a regional map shows where each local map is located. Also includes a number of color photographs in the introduction pages. About the only thing I would fault the book for is skipping a few of downtown's historic towers; however, the book does an excellent job of directing city explorers to St. Louis's most interesting areas.