Word: venturi
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...Venturi's ideas must be understood as representing a revolt against much of contemporary architecture. His book is an attack on those high-handed architects who see themselves as setting standards of architectural excellence. They fill our landscape with imposing, heroic forms which are all too familiar--a Gund Hall, a new Science Center, or a Boston City Hall. Venturi is interested in the sort of architecture that has no pretension to being heroic. He implies that there is nothing to be learned from these self-conscious monuments to good taste. Rather he looks to the more low-brow, eclectic...
...Venturi revels in the forms of the gambling casinos. For him the front colonnade of Caesar's Palace becomes like St. Peter's in Rome; the blue and, gold mosaic work like the Early Christian tomb of Galia Placidia; the cypresses in the parking lot like the Villa D'Este; and the statue of David near the entrance, although having slight anatomical exaggerations, like the Palazzo Vecchio in Rome. Venturi's sense of imagination even allows him to see the A&P parking lot in terms of the gardens at Versailles. The parking lines give direction in a vast, expansion...
...HOWEVER FASCINATING Las Vegas'n architecture, and even its parking lots, may be in an environment of enormous spaces and high speeds, architectural form is not enough to attract attention. Signs in Las Vegas compensate for what the buildings may lack in commercial persuasion. And Venturi takes great pains to study them carefully. Some work as polychrome sculpture in the day and sources of light at night; one revolves another is twenty-two stories high; one even says "Howdy Pardner" every thirty seconds. And again the authors find historical parallels. These signs of Las Vegas have their precedents...
...Venturi's aptitude for making such outrageous comparisons between great buildings of the past and those of the strip add humor and flair to the writing. But this humor belies the intense seriousness of his message. Venturi wants people to believe that not only is urban sprawl worth understanding but that new techniques should be developed to analyze it. Pages upon pages are filled with land use plans, maps locating churches and auto rental establishments, maps indicating illumination levels on the strip, traffic studies, and plans of gas stations. Other pages are laid out in magnificent collages of various photographs...
Most people will agree that the strip in an extremely functional solution to an environment of high-speed automobiles such as Las Vegas, that requires the heighted visibility of signs and rather low-profile buildings. But somehow Venturi mistakes an architecture useful for commercial purposes in Las Vegas as being an architecture that reflects a middle-class aesthetic and consequently should be extended for residential and institutional...