Street View reveals it - Postmodern hide-and-seek: find me if you can, when the street itself was supposedly being celebrated. What is one to make of this private charade?
One had always known the Vanna Venturi house (1964) by its facade – the pure elemental presentation of its idea stands proud, almost as a diagram: a front facing the open street boldly, with quiet flamboyance, as a plain, ‘ordinary’ house might, while playfully referencing the everyday with Postmodern skill and panache. Here past images, ideas and forms create a clever amalgam in what is cheekily presented as a modest, simple home for mother – Robert Venturi’s mum, Vanna. It is a project that appears to have passed the ‘mum’ test which, in Australia, is something like the ‘pub’ test, creating a tension with the extremes of the new that made one look and think: one was challenged.
Everyone knows the house by its fancy formal facade, a facade ‘fancy’ with both its imaginative twists, and its structured decoration. The image presents a broken gable articulated by a double dado line joining simple window openings, with an entry void superimposed by an arc bridging a lintel dominated by a flue form. The image is always shown proudly standing by itself, never in context, although the ideas behind the shaping and thinking are said to touch on things local and historical: 'the decorated shed' became the catchphrase.
Did Venturi's mother have a car?
One only has to look at Google Images to see the raw clarity of the presentation – always alone; always in the clear light of an open American street, or so it seems. Occasionally, in the Googled images, one can see an angled view of the house that exposes one or the other side in association with the main facade; sometimes the rear elevation is displayed too; but the primary reference is the memorable entry facade with its blandly suave classic proportions and slick presence. The other elevations are somewhat muddled, less memorable. The context is never, if ever, illustrated: it is always cropped, precisely removed to allow the house to be seen and considered alone. A smudge of trees can occasionally fringe the image, and neighbours can sometimes, very rarely, be glimpsed from the views of the interior.
Street View is so surprising because it has no grooming of place with careful framing: it reveals all. The first glimpse of the location in Google Earth shows a leafy portion of Philadelphia where what one comes to know as the narrow ways and romantic lanes, are buried in trees that sit in the dominant defining arc of a divisive railway line. As one zooms in on the identified lot, it becomes clear that this house does not stand raw and proud on an ordinary street frontage. It is buried in trees, deep on narrow leafy ways, at the end of a long driveway. It is tucked away as a recluse, in a shady glade, surrounded by shadowy suburbia full of expressive hips and valleys sheltering different homes that stand along the street alignment. The Vanna Venturi house looks as though it has been placed on a battleaxe site subdivided off behind some existing houses.
The lane that the house is closest too is behind it.
The house is cut off from this exposure by a dense clump of trees:
it ignores this access.
The odd one out in this precinct is the Vanna Venturi house – it is set back, removed, almost cowering, and has a strong and simple gable form and formality. The neighbours all stand close to the street with an array of varied hipped roofs, each ironically vying for the complexity Robert Venturi has written about, but with less intent. How does this difference stand with the Postmodern theory? Is Postmodernism merely an intellectual pursuit; a story telling? What games are being played here? Postmodernism boasted about ordinariness, even ugliness when necessary, as an aesthetic guide to understanding and expression, adopting familiarity as a guide; but is it really more of an anaesthetic with its approach to life, arguing for brash crudity to become the new ideals, when the actual presentation of one prime example appears as something like a small remote cottage quaintly tucked away in a charming, idyllic forest, as if it might be waiting for Little Red Riding Hood to stumble upon it? The trees surrounding the home isolate it from its neighbours, leaving it as an oddity when the references are said to be to everyday suburbia used in a refreshingly straightforward ‘architectural’ manner. Is the strategy too bookish; only textual in its relevance?
The carefully considered configuration of openings that always appear to struggle with closure and exposure are:
the bedroom, the bathroom, the entry, and the kitchen, all of which, except the entry, might prefer privacy to public display.
What does this ruse do for things Postmodern? What does it do for Venturi? Robert Venturi built his name on this place, his mother’s house. It was published extensively as an ideal and became a desirable Postmodern icon. It looked crisp and original in the published images, involving an invigorating strategy to give meaning to a mocked Modernism that had, at that time, lost its way as a style alone, with each development moving into more inaccessible, exotic extremes, like the Boston City Hall and Saarinen’s CBS Building. The critiques pointed out how inhuman, inhumane and insensitive these buildings were; how they could not be ‘read;’ how entries were disguised as an irrelevance in the overall massing and making of the fabricated idea and its presentation. The new Postmodern work stepped away from this inarticulate shaping of Modernism into a world of subtle references that touched on meanings, understandings of place and forms. Here ideas enriched experience with a complexity of seemingly contradictory ‘readings’ layered into an inspired, special ordinariness. Along with its seriously studious strategy, there was something playful and humourous in the new work too, that stepped away from the grand but deadpan Modernist ‘style,’ into a flowing aggregation of ideas. Place and space were made by diverse considerations of history and of home, as exampled in this house for mother.
If mother could accept this, why not us? There was something touchingly intimate in the elaborate scheme and the scheming. What did Vanna Venturi really see in this? Mrs. Kaufmann has told us about her perceptions of Falling Water – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2017/12/a-fallingwater-myth-wright-way.html Word of the new Postmodern house spread fast: suddenly everything was exciting; changing; challenging. The rigours of Modernism had been cut, snapped off, capped off with a new way of thinking and forming. We were now alert and alive to our being, to a new breadth of possibilities – new rationales. It was a special time. Anthropology and linguistics were introduced into architectural theory and ideas, broadening the base for conceptual and perceptual references.
Now looking at Street View and seeing what the house really is, gives one some cause to pause and consider. Were we duped? Did we allow ourselves to be tricked? Are we always coming to know things only as they are published, isolated and framed as the architect might choose? It seems so; and these first perceptions stick with us forever, and shape futures.
This house is a separated place; it offers nothing to the suburb or the street as an identity or location. It has to be sought out by one’s knowing about it, such is its concealment. Still, once discovered, one has to ‘see the place as’ it was originally photographed: one has to try to understand what is being looked at with a careful analysis and shrewd interpretations, make a re-appraisal, bringing past misunderstandings to the present for confirmation in a different ‘see as’ test. With tricks like this, do ideas on Postmodernism have to be revised, reconsidered yet again? It looks as though the texts have made the points rather than the reality: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2014/04/seeing-what-we-believe-idyllic-visions.html How can this be overcome? As architects we need realities, depth and true meanings that reverberate, if things are to endure and be enriched, rather than merely promoting architecture as a chocolate bar is, with as much passing satisfaction too. The architectural time-scale is much greater than a fad. The sad thing is that Postmodernism did touch on a nerve that buzzed and had logic and power. What went wrong?
The Vanna Venturi house now stands alone in a crowd, trying to look like its photograph, perhaps hoping that the neighbours will not be seen or looked at, or considered at all, with the ambition of maintaining the dream, the vision: but this is futile. One can imagine how the trip, the getting there along the leafy glades, will have impacted on perceptions even before the facade is glimpsed. One wonders: why structure a facade in a pretty, densely-treed suburbia? Why use a formal front here? Is it more like an advertising hoarding; something like Harry Seidler’s mother’s house – an advert for a new style? Are mothers used because they are prepared to be adaptable and tolerant, willing to help promote their sons' futures?
Street View clarifies things: it is a marvellous tool. The first image of the house seen on Google Earth was the view of the rear, the back facade. Alas, the elegance of the front is not maintained here with this truncated collage that is close to a rear lane that it ignores.# Dense trees make the divide. The different thinking displayed here is similar to that seen in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House – see Street View. The rear Robie wall seems to sit on the boundary, with the broad cantilevered roof awkwardly cut back flush, and the generous openings of the street frontage that emphasize the floating roofs transformed into a set of tiny openings in the brick wall.
The issue appears complex; it not only involves a popularised Postmodern theory revealed otherwise in practice; but it also concerns the matter of architectural presentations that use every manipulation photography allows to recreate a preferred identity for digital media and printed publications. These are international sources of information that is really misinformation that develops impossible dreams and indulgent hopes. These eventually not only get dashed by reality, but also worryingly become an inspiration for others to use for the shaping of new 'Postmodern' works that further distort the vision.
The rear of the house
The rear lane
Is the solution just a matter of being honest; of avoiding all of the hype of styled appearances and sought-after architectural standing, and letting the work speak for itself? The irony is that Postmodernism promoted such a stance in its protest against Modernism.
GOOGLE IMAGES - A SELECTION
Note the pulled blinds on the windows, and compliant mother and her 'suburban' pot plant
See # P.S. below - and mother sweeping
No pulled blinds on the windows here
A glimpse of the neighbour #
Note the neighbour
Note the pulled blinds on the windows
Note the pulled blinds on the windows, even in the gallery
NOTE:
There are well over
400 images on display, with the promise of more - 'Show more results'
- when one searches Vanna Venturi House in Google Images. This
much-celebrated house has been given extensive coverage; but in not
one of these images is the actual context revealed. A hint of a
neighbour is suggested in the chance view out of one window, that of
the upper bedroom, in two photographs. Strangely, the facade looks as
much at home reconstructed as an exhibit in a gallery as it does
photographed in situ. It is as if the house has no need of any
context, wanting to remain an uncontaminated 'gem' - an unpolluted
idea; a pure intellectual exercise. Is this all Postmodernism might
be?
#
P.S.
P.S.
The glimpse of the
neighbour through the arched opening in the upper bedroom seen in the
early black and white image might suggest that originally the house
could have addressed the rear lane, but this is unclear. It would
mean that the main facade, the identity of the house, fronted an
access along a rural approach and a private car parking area, hardly a public place, while the rear facade fronted a
laneway parallel to it, as seen more commonly as the usual street
arrangement. The current circumstance cuts this connection off, if it
did ever exist. The point is that this relationship has never been
promoted: the main facade has always been the image of the house, as
can be seen in Google Images. The rear facade is more like a backdrop
to this presence than a public statement in its own right.
OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS
from the era when appearances were important
Rose Seidler House (constructed 1948-1950)
A visionary, experimental piece designed for Harry's mother
CBS Building (designed 1961; completed 1965)
This problem with this project was the difficulty in finding the entrance
Boston City Hall (constructed 1963- 1968)
This project was mocked because of its 'La Tourette' monumentalism
Vanna Venturi House (constructed 1962 - 1964)
Ironically, Venturi sought to incorporate complex cultural meanings in his work
ROBIE HOUSE, CHICAGO
The Street View
. . . to be frank, this is pretty ordinary
The edge between the ordinary and the extraordinary
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