Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown "Architecture as Decorated Shelter" 1984 [but the material is mainly from

1. 
   Every architect works with a definition in mind. [like Plato and Le Corbusier in accepting definition, unlike Plato and Le Corbusier in that the definition is not eternal and unchanging]
   
2. 
   Our current definition: architecture is shelter with symbols on it (or with decoration on it).
   
3. 
   This is a shocking definition because Modern architecture never included ornament or explicitly shelter, and it focused on space and process.
   
   1. 
      Louis Kahn: architecture is the thoughtful making of spaces.
      
   2. 
      Le Corbusier: architecture is a masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light, and a house is a machine for living in.
      
   3. 
      recent semiotic interpretations
      
   4. 
      Previous thinkers did not emphasize function in their definitions.
      
   5. 
      Adolf Loos in 1906: ornament is crime.
      
   6. 
      Symbolism was associated with historical eclecticism.
      
   7. 
      Our emphasizing shelter puts function in the definition, but we add symbolic rhetoric, and free function to take care of itself.
      
4. 
   six comparisons to justify our definition of architecture
   

#1 Rome (urban tradition) and Las Vegas (urban sprawl) (learn from both)

1. 
   We discovered Rome in the 1950s: enclosed exterior space and intimate urban scale.
   
2. 
   We re-discovered history, the traditional basis for architecture, including spatial relationships, pedestrian scale, the urban quality of Italian towns, and the piazza.
   
3. 
   But now urban renewal piazzas disrupt the social fabric of American cities. (This was really true of the 1960s.)
   
4. 
   We saw piazzas as pure space, dry configurations of compositional elements: as abstract compositions like Abstract Expressionist paintings of the same decade: focused on formal relationships [like Bell and Greenberg].
   
5. 
   We ignored symbolic content of the buildings (iconography), forgetting that forms were buildings.
   
6. 
   We had to go to Las Vegas to learn from Rome about space and signs. [They are suggesting that Rome would have told them about signs if they had only looked.]
   

Las Vegas in the 1960s

7. 
   The strip had a significance that Modern-designed urban landscapes don’t have.
   
8. 
   Modernity [applying modernist ideas to urban design] failed to bring urbanity back to our cities.
   
9. 
   The basis was symbolism: if you ignore the signs as “visual pollution” you are lost.
   
10. 
    You are lost if you see the buildings as forms making space.
    
11. 
    See the buildings as symbols in space, not as forms in space.
    
12. 
    When you see no buildings at night, only illuminated signs, the Strip is in its pure state.
    
13. 
    Note the vast spaces and the fast speeds from which the Strip are seen.
    
14. 
    Note the uses of mixed media in architecture, [Greenberg, by contrast, would oppose mixing media].
    
15. 
    We concentrated on the techniques (not content) of commercial vernacular [everyday] architecture. Although some people thought so, we were not promoting giant corporatism.
    
16. 
    The messages of the Strip are bolder to suit our coarser sensibilities and gross tempos, but they are no more promotional than those of classical or Modern architecture.
    
    1. 
       Contrast the Strip to the subtle and tasteful persuasion of Modern formalist symbolism.
       
    2. 
       The visual problems of roadside architecture are due more to low economic status of some, and to the bad habits of Americans.
       

17. 
    Pop Art turned our sensibilities to the commercial Strip, as Abstract Expressionism turned us to Rome.
    
18. 
    Pop Art showed us again how to value familiar and conventional elements with new meaning.
    
19. 
    Meaning via association is included in defining architecture as well as expression.
    
20. 
    Photorealist painters also enhanced the ordinary.
    

21. 
    Vitruvius’ definition of architecture: firmness, commodity, and delight.
    
22. 
    The 20^th century version: structure, program, and expression.
    
23. 
    Modern architects: structure and program are architecture, expressive architecture will result.
    
24. 
    Although there is no ornament in Gropius buildings, they rework industrial architectural vocabulary and are symbolic of industrial processes.
    
25. 
    Architects, Gropius included, adapt a formal vocabulary for their uses.
    
26. 
    Cubist painting was another source: despite revolutionary rhetoric, association relying on past experience was part of Le Corbusier’s architecture: for example his use of industrial forms from grain elevators and automobiles.
    
27. 
    Late-Modern architects substituted articulation for decoration and ornament.
    
28. 
    The “New York Five” [includes Richard Meier, architect of San Jose City Hall] adopted Le Corbusier’s forms as a form of symbolism: but their buildings lack tension and complexity. [Thus Venturi can be seen as criticizing Meier’s building even before it was built.]
    
29. 
    Neither expressionist Modernists nor eclectic Modernists leave room for function: function is distorted for functionalist-structuralist styling.
    

30. 
    Van der Rohe used elements to symbolize industrial processes: vernacular art enhanced as fine art.
    
31. 
    McDonald’s arches: picturesque image [see the classic McDonalds in south San Jose]
    
    1. 
       Their origins are in Le Corbusier, Saarinen’s St. Louis arch, and Freyssinet’s hangers.
       
32. 
    Seeing a factory as beautiful was shocking in the 20s, but now easy to like.
    
    1. 
       Other examples of shock treatment in art: Modern painters, pagan Classical orders in the 15^th century, Romantic natural landscape.
       
33. 
    But using industrial forms is obsolete: a new revolution is needed, e.g. an electronic one is relevant to us now.
    

34. 
    Just as a connoisseur of music would play both Scarlatti and the Beatles, the connoisseur in architecture should accept the commercial strip and large signs, i.e. pop architecture.
    
35. 
    There is a need for hierarchy of musical forms [he means plain vs. fancy, as he explains below.]
    
36. 
    Ideas of aesthetic unity, simple forms, pure order, total design, led to total control, discouraging quality and stultifying diversity and hierarchy.
    

37. 
    There are hierarchies of architectural symbolism: most architecture should be plain. For example, we are opposed to the strident college campuses of Modernist architecture.
    
38. 
    Ours is not an era for heroic or pure architectural statements, but for a rhetoric coming from signs, sculpture, and lights.
    
39. 
    The source of our fancy architecture in the commercial strip. The prototype is the early Christian basilica as decorated shed.
    
40. 
    Shelter is always plain: but it can be a grid for decoration, which can be ordinary or heroic (when fancy style is appropriate).
    
41. 
    Our glories can come perhaps from mass housing as decorated shelter, being sensitive to practical needs of different peoples.