Architects: Robert Venturi
Year: 1964
Photographs: Robert Venturi, Maria Buszek, UPenn, Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates, storiesofhouses.com, Smallbones, Carol M. Highsmith, Wikimedia Commons
City: Philadelphia
Country: United States
Designed by Robert Venturi for his mother in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, the Vanna Venturi House (1962–1964) exemplifies complexity and contradiction, heralding Postmodern architecture. Its split symmetrical gable, exaggerated chimney, and asymmetrical windows reflect both function and Venturi’s experimental approach. Inside, the fireplace and stairs compete as focal points, with distorted forms accommodating each other. The first floor houses the living room, kitchen, and bedroom, while the second floor features a bedroom, storage, a terrace, and a steep “nowhere stair.” Venturi played with scale, enlarging features like the fireplace while contrasting them with low doors and a large lunette window. With minimal circulation and layered walls functioning as enclosures and screens, the house serves as a manifesto for Postmodern design.
Most critics often consider consistency to be a crucial element of architectural design. However, in the Vanna Venturi House, Robert Venturi deviated from this convention, exploring complexity and contradiction in architecture, and challenging established norms.
Situated in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, on a flat site surrounded by trees, the Vanna Venturi House was designed and built by Robert Venturi for his mother between 1962 and 1964. In exploring his ideas on complexity and contradiction—concepts he articulated in his book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture—Venturi developed six fully realized versions of the design. The final iteration ultimately became recognized as the first example of Postmodern architecture.
As one approaches the Vanna Venturi House, its exterior conveys a symbolic representation of shelter, featuring a wide symmetrical gable reminiscent of a classical pediment, though notably split. An exaggerated chimney extends prominently from the back, further emphasizing this imagery.
The main entrance is centrally located, creating a sense of symmetry that is simultaneously present and disrupted by the placement of windows. These windows are positioned according to the interior’s functional needs—for example, a Modernist ribbon window serves the kitchen, while square windows correspond to the bedroom and bathroom on the opposite side of the front facade.
The interior of the Vanna Venturi House centers on the fireplace, the traditional hearth of the home, while maintaining Venturi’s concept of a “generic” house with unexpected twists. The layout comprises only five functional rooms, yet the exterior connects to a public scale, giving the impression of being much larger than it is. The “generic” fireplace is positioned alongside a staircase, with the two elements competing to be the house’s core. The fireplace, a void, and the stair, a solid, both contort in form to accommodate each other within the vertical space.
Upon entering the Vanna Venturi House, one is greeted by the main living space. The first floor also includes the kitchen and bedroom, incorporated at the request of Venturi’s mother. The second floor houses an additional bedroom, storage space, and a terrace. A “nowhere stair” on the second floor integrates into the core design, rising at an awkward angle. Its steep slope renders it functionally useless at one level, while at another, it serves as a ladder for accessing and cleaning the high window on the second floor.
To introduce greater contradiction and complexity, Venturi deliberately experimented with scale. Within the house, certain elements appear “too big,” such as the oversized fireplace and the disproportionately tall mantel in relation to the room’s overall size.
The doors in the Vanna Venturi House are wide yet low in height, creating a striking contrast with the grandeur of the entrance space. The rear elevation features an oversized lunette window, consistent with the exterior’s exaggerated elements. Venturi also minimized circulation space, designing the house to consist of large, distinct rooms with minimal subdivisions between them.
Venturi described the exterior of the Vanna Venturi House as a layering system, intended to make the walls function both as enclosures and as screens. For instance, the recessed east glass wall creates a covered yard screened by the rear wall. This concept is applied on a smaller scale to the bedroom on the opposite side of the house.
The Vanna Venturi House, a manifesto for Postmodern architecture, is a composition of rectangular, curvilinear, and diagonal elements that converge—or at times juxtapose—in a manner that unmistakably embodies complexity and contradiction.
Davies, Colin. Key Houses of the Twentieth Century. W. W. Norton & Co., 2006. Print.
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Address: Millman Street, Philadelphia, PA 19118, United States
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