Page 22 - Studio International - September October 1975

billboard, which Learning from Las Vegas
is useful since it embodies the approach labelling requirement is fully satisfied by
has theorized, is an acceptance of the
at a level near parody. It is the competition sticking the most varied matter on to the
product of technology as the
design for the National Football Hall of building itself: and you have the new
incarnation of some natural force
Fame near the Rutgers Stadium in New architecture, which has moreover the
Jersey. The scheme is a low (three-storey) great virtue of looking just like all other
immanent in machine production; it is
vaulted gallery with an atrophied buildings.
therefore presented as being outside the
grandstand towards a playing field at the So concerned are the Venturis to
critical, judging reach of any cultural
back; but the important feature is the emphasize the unity of their buildings
criteria. In that way, the Venturi
vast electrified billboard (Bill-Ding- with all that surrounds them that the
argument is strangely parallel to the Loos
Board), the size of a full-size football distinction between the 'almost all right'
argument. Needs dictate the shed; the
pitch, more than twice the height of the of Main Street and the presumably
shed should not be transformed into
hall proper, and running its full width. `quite all right' of the Venturis' work is
'sculptured' volume which is more
often blurred; though it is probably
discernible in the way the ugly and
ordinary have been complex and
contradictory.
I say this without malice: it is the
Venturis' favourite approval words
which I have used to qualify their own
work. Since they have become the best-
known architectural office (among the
younger ones) in the Anglo-Saxon world,
the whole problem of ornament has now
been identified with their formulation of
it. But in fact it has been about for some
time. Some ten years ago, the Zurich
Kunstgewerbemuseum presented the
argument for and against the thing
visually, through an exhibition. And the
problem has been re-appearing in quite
different ways. Notoriously, certain
architects as different as James Stirling
(air-conditioning plant in the History
Faculty Library at Cambridge) and
Richard Rogers (service ducting on the
exterior of the Plateau Beaubourg
building in Paris) have been using
services in a way which suggests that they
have formulated the problem, at least to
themselves. More crucially, it has been
explored by the Viennese group :
St. Florian, Pichler, Abraham, Hollein
and others. For lack of space, I shall
arbitrarily take Hollein as the
representative of the group. He has none
of the populist propensities of the
Venturis, though he, too, is concerned
with the ordinary, if not the ugly. In
particular, he has elevated the method of
ironic choice into an exercise which he
has called 'Everything is architecture'.
Among his media, he has included an
atomizer for making 'instant
environment' and a box of varying pills
for transforming environment 'from
inside yourself'. Many of his more
tangible projects involve the changing
of some piece of technology (a sparking
plug, an aircraft-carrier) into an enigmatic
but architectonic object through a
change of scale and context. These
buildings are all ornament; the very
thing that is anathema to the Venturis.
In condemnation of such things, they
Venturi and Rauch quote an aphorism of Pugin's (from a
Bill-Ding-Board for the National Football Hall of Fame Competition 1967 book he published in 1843) deploring
(top) front elevation model
(above) rear elevation model `... ornaments that are actually
constructed, instead of forming the
The triangular piazza in front, the decoration of construction'. In fact,
expensive and less directly related to
their direct satisfaction. So far the
building and the pitch are isolated from Pugin meant the aphorism to condemn
the surrounding roadways by a parking `decorated sheds' of the kind dear to the
argument has much in common with
lot about twice the total area of piazza, Venturis, as the first part of that
Loos' more sophisticated justification of
engineering works against the tortuous
building and pitch. The shed is aphorism makes quite clear:
effects of architects' insensitivity to the
therefore decorated with a vengeance; `Architectural features are continuously
and isolated in the New Jersey urban tacked on to buildings with which they
deeds of men and of nature. But the
sprawl in a way which makes it part of have no connection, merely for what is
Venturi argument adds a rather heavy
the suburban landscape, camouflaged termed effect . .
makeweight, which inverts the result.
indeed as an uncritical object among To tag 'Eat Here' on to a café or diner
Since variety is an essential human need,
and buildings need in some way to say
others. Here's the rub. This acceptance is not what Pugin meant by 'the
of the culture of the shed and the decoration of construction' at all. What he
what they are, this extra need and the
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