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Robert Venturi Quotes

Modernism is about space. Postmodernism is about communication. You should do what turns you on.

Modernism is about space. Postmodernism is about communication. You should do what turns you on.

Robert Venturi
Communication, Space, Should

When circumstances defy order, order should bend or break: anomalies and uncertainties give validity to architecture.

Robert Venturi
Order, Giving, Anomalies
Robert Venturi, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1977). “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture”, p.41, The Museum of Modern Art

Disharmony that comes from circumstances that are valid has tension, poignancy, quality, and beauty.

Robert Venturi
Quality, Circumstances, Tension

As an architect, I try to be guided not by habit but by a conscious sense of the past-by precedent, thoughtfully considered...As an artist, I frankly write about what I like in architecture: complexity and contradiction. From what we find we like-what we are easily attracted to-we can learn much of what we really are.

Robert Venturi
Writing, Artist, Past

It was very unusual to employ prettiness as part of a building.

Robert Venturi
Building, Unusual, Prettiness

Main Street is almost alright.

Robert Venturi
Main Street, Streets, Alright
"Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture". Book by Robert Venturi, 1966.

The Italian landscape has always harmonized the vulgar and the Vitruvian: the contorni around the duomo, the portiere'S laundry across the padrone's portone, Supercortemaggiore against the Romanesque apse. Naked children have never played in our fountains, and I. M. Pei will never be happy on Route 66.

Robert Venturi
Children, Italian, Naked

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