文丘里的艰难困苦：建筑师如何改变设计
Robert Venturi and the Difficult Whole: How Architecture's Enfant Terrible Changed Design Forever

由专筑网李韧，蒋晖编译

本文最初发表于CommonEdge，标题为“文丘里的艰难困苦”。

罗伯特•文丘里（1925-2018）是上个世纪最有影响力的美国建筑师，但主要原因并不是其设计作品，也不是因为其设计师的身份，而是因为他与赖特、康、盖里的思维并不相同。在1965年至1985年间，他和合作伙伴丹尼斯•斯科特•布朗改变了许多建筑师对于建筑、城市、景观的看法，这就好像Marshall McLuhan、Bob Dylan、 Andy Warhol在当时改变了人们对于艺术、媒体、流行文化的看法一样。

在上世纪70年代，我曾和文丘里共事，当时我只是一名学徒，因此他的书、建筑，以及教导，对我而言都有着很大的影响。他和我的父亲年龄相仿，而丹尼斯则和我母亲年龄一致。

This article was originally published on CommonEdge as "Robert Venturi and the Difficult Whole."
Robert Venturi (1925-2018) was the most influential American architect of the last century, though not primarily for his built work, or because of his stature as a designer. He will never stand beside Wright, or Kahn, or even Gehry in that regard. Between 1965 and 1985 he and his collaborator, Denise Scott Brown, changed the way all architects look at buildings, cities, and landscapes, much in the way that Marshall McLuhan, Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol changed our view of art, media, and popular culture during the same period.
I worked with Bob Venturi during my apprenticeship in the 1970s; I also grew up with his books, buildings and paternal influence. He and my father were one year apart; Denise is the same age as my mother.


Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi. ImageRollin LaFrance, Courtesy of VSBA

经历过上个世纪60至70年代的人们都明白电气Kool Aid对于文化的推动作用。对于年轻的建筑师而言，文丘里和丹尼斯则同样重要。他们曾经在拉斯维加斯度过蜜月，在耶鲁、宾夕法尼亚、加州大学洛杉矶分校、纽约当代艺术博物馆之间流连，在上世纪60年代中期，他们声名显赫。1967年，他们结婚之后，丹尼斯希望他们也能拥有诸如Maxwell Fry、 Jane Drew，亦或是合作伙伴Allison、 Peter Smithson那样的影响力，但其实她根本无需担心这些。在《建筑的复杂性与矛盾性》一书受到Vincent Scully的称赞之后，文丘里成为了AIA金质奖章的获得者，并且引导了对于现代主义的评论，而这是在美国越南战争期间的主要军事工业综合体的主要风格。

其实许多人都不知道，在某个时期，丹尼斯•斯科特•布朗在学术界的名声已经超过了她的丈夫文丘里，她是第一位领导城市设计项目的女建筑师，同时也是第一位在公司的领导层拥有一席之地的女性，更是一位耶鲁大学建筑学院的女领导者。在文丘里的事务所里，她和这些以男性为主导的员工们共同合作，文丘里并不喜欢“Venturi and Rauch”的说法，因此他们是不可分割的整体。

Anyone who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s was aware of the electric Kool Aid that drove the culture. For young architects, Bob and Denise Venturi were as important to the culture as television personalities. They were attractive, witty, and hip—honeymooning in Las Vegas and bouncing between Yale, Penn, UCLA, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York during their whirlwind rise to prominence in the mid-1960s. After their marriage in 1967 Denise hoped that they might have the same influence as her mentors, Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, or colleagues Allison and Peter Smithson, had in the United Kingdom. She needn’t have worried. Following Vincent Scully’s encomium about Complexity and Contradiction and Architecture, her husband would become an AIA medal winner, theory guru, and firebrand leading the critique of “corporate modernism”—the symbol of America’s military industrial complex during the Vietnam period.
It’s easy to forget that for a time Denise Scott Brown actually eclipsed her husband’s stature in academia: she was the first woman to head and urban design program, the first to have her name on the masthead of a major firm, and almost the first to lead an elite architecture school (Yale). By joining her husband’s firm, she strove to create a “difficult” partnership in a male-dominated field. Bob resisted those who suggested he retain the name “Venturi and Rauch” for the business—they were an inseparable creative team.



许多年轻建筑师都阅读了MoMA的白皮书，我在这些照片和文章中也发现了许多反对Harvard Bauhaus、General Motors、SOM密斯式塔楼的观点。我原本从事于英文文学专业，因此了解文丘里在普林斯顿阅读过William Empson的《朦胧的七种类型》，这本书对于其建筑立面与平面的构思起到了基础性作用。同样，他也了解Eliot、Pound、 the New Critics等作品，这意味着，建筑也许能够通过这些看似复杂的诗词歌赋、讽刺语汇进行表达。建筑还可以表达出幽默、矛盾、温柔、浮躁的情绪，实际上，任何诗歌、交响乐章、抽象艺术所能表达的内容建筑都同样可以做到。他认为，这些在Michelangelo、Lutyens、Frank Furness，以及希腊复兴银行等作品中表现得淋漓尽致。你也许会发现，复杂的作品能够提高人们的审美意识，同时挑战设计师的品位。

我并不了解的是，在我大学毕业之前将出版的书籍即文丘里的《A&P停车场的意义》和《向拉斯维加斯学习》，会对注册建筑师与规划师产生这么大的影响。当时我花费了积攒下来的钱买了印刷本，它们印刷在如同《Ten Commandments》大小般的书籍中。回家之后我反复地阅读，有时我甚至希望将它们珍藏起来，以免我的室友们看到它，他们这样的知识分子也许真的会写下关于购物中心、超市、广告牌的文章。

《向拉斯维加斯学习》一书中的想法震惊了整个建筑界，甚至让文丘里的一些粉丝也逃离其“后现代”美学立场，当然，文丘里自己并不认可这个标签。他是一位美国人，他把Main Street、the Strip、the Long Island Duckling看做许多后现代军械展览艺术运动的延续，其中包括Edward Hopper与Charles Demuth的现实主义、William Carlos Williams与 Grant Wood地域主义，以及Grant Wood、Supergraphics、波普艺术、早期极简主义等等。斯科特•布朗是早期城市保护运动的倡导者，Steve Izenour在新泽西州Wildwood发起了Doo Wop保护协会，Charles Moore推出了向迪士尼致敬的作品，“你必须为公共生活做出贡献。”虽然这些理念很难得到认可，但是在当时的70年代，城市景观的评论仍然有着预见性。

Like many young architects who read the little white book from MoMA following its publication, I found in the tiny photos and dense prose a liberating argument against the establishment architecture of the Harvard Bauhaus, General Motors, and SOM’s sleek Miesian towers. As an English literature major, I knew that Venturi had read William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity at Princeton, using it as the basis for his examination of different “orders” in building plans and facades. He knew the work of Eliot, Pound and the New Critics—so meaning in architecture might be interpreted as these figures had looked at complex poetic syntax, irony, and oxymoronic vocabularies. Buildings could express humor, ambivalence, suavity, frivolity—indeed any emotion conveyed by poems, symphonies or abstract art. Look, he said, at Michelangelo, Lutyens, Frank Furness, and the Greek Revival bank around the corner. You’ll find complex, difficult compositions that raise your aesthetic awareness and challenge your taste.
Little did I know that a book would be published shortly before my graduation from college that would create an even bigger splash among practicing architects and planners: A Significance for A&P Parking Lots or Learning From Las Vegas.  I spent every penny I had in my savings account to buy a copy—here was a New Testament to follow the Old, printed in a folio the size of the Ten Commandments. I went home and read it cover to cover, sometimes thinking I had to hide it like a Playboy magazine from my roomates. Were these intellectuals actually writing sympathetically about sprawl, shopping centers, supermarkets and billboards?
The ideas in Learning From Las Vegas shocked the architectural establishment, and even turned some Venturi enthusiasts away from his “postmodern” aesthetic positions. He, of course, never endorsed that label. As an American he saw the embrace of Main Street, the Strip, and the Long Island Duckling as extensions of many post-Armory-Show art movements, including the realism of Edward Hopper and Charles Demuth, the regionalism of William Carlos Williams and Grant Wood, Supergraphics, Pop Art, and early Minimalism. Scott Brown was an early advocate for urban neighborhood preservation; Steve Izenour started the Doo Wop Preservation Society in Wildwood, New Jersey. Charles Moore published his tribute to Disneyland, “You Have to Pay for the Public Life.” Though difficult to acknowledge then, these 1970s critiques of the urban landscape were prescient.


Mielparque Nikko Kirifuri Hotel and Spa

路易斯•康的工作室就培养出许多具有天赋的设计师，而费城的VRSB也有着许多成功的建筑师。其实，评论家很少指出的是，上世纪80年代，与文丘里共事的一些人最后又回归到现代主义，Steve Kieran、Jim Timberlake、W.G. Clark以及Fred Schwartz就是明显的例子，另外还有一些人则把传统地域主义建筑视作设计的灵感源泉。Tony Atkin,、Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk、Stanley Taraila以及Cameron McTavish就从古典主义的城市中获取诸多灵感，从而成为了知名的建筑师与城市规划师。但是，Scully在许多场合也指出，如果没有文丘里的引导，世界上便不会有新城市主义的国会。多元化的思维对于当代建筑师来说有些难以接受，但它却是现代社会的发展前提。

《建筑的复杂性与矛盾性》一书所引发的意外后果便是以背景为基础的批评理论在美国许多的建筑学院中兴起。但文丘里仍然远离这些纯粹的理论家，他认为自己是一名建筑师，希望在建筑中表达其设计理念，而非语汇。他就像John Dewey或者Henry David Thoreau那样，是一位来自美国的实用主义者。文丘里接受了现代建筑师所面对的困难，热爱现代环境，但也不排斥人文主义，他崇尚平等与独立，其事务所的目标是改善客户的生活条件，因此他也并不是一名流行的建筑师。

在今天，诸如Contemp的La Jolla博物馆等优秀建筑正面临着毁灭性的威胁，这一点十分令人沮丧。而VRSB建筑师当代美国的设计标识，例如文丘里母亲住宅、宾夕法尼亚州费城公会大楼、宾夕法尼亚州费城富兰克林中心广场、美国俄亥俄州奥伯林美术馆、普林斯顿胡应湘大楼、国家美术博物馆圣斯布里厅等等。在90年代之后的建筑其实并不多了。

在其职业生涯的最后三十年里，文丘里坦然地接受了其早期作品的荣誉与奖项，但其当代学术与评论界中却很少有代表作。这是历史的必然结果，但我相信在未来，时间会证明一切。文丘里生活在充满挑战的时代里，他仍然以幽默和优雅的态度接受所有的质疑。并且他以中庸、困苦的设计方式来回应争议，这位建筑师与时代、场所的步调几乎一致，即费城、美国、20世纪。

Just as Lou Kahn’s office trained scores of talented designers, so VRSB in Philadelphia launched many successful careers. Critics seldom point out that a few of those who worked with Venturi turned back toward modernism during the 1980s—Steve Kieran, Jim Timberlake, W.G. Clark and Fred Schwartz are prime examples—while others began to see traditional and vernacular architecture as a more potent source of inspiration for new work. Tony Atkin, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Stanley Taraila and Cameron McTavish learned from classical and City Beautiful precedents as they became successful architects and planners. We would not have the Congress for the New Urbanism without Robert Venturi’s bold leadership, as Scully pointed out on many occasions. Pluralism is difficult for some contemporary architects to accept, but it is a condition of modernity.
An unintended consequence of Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture was the rapid rise of text-based critical theory in many American architecture schools. Venturi distanced himself from these pure theorists, always claiming to be an architect intent on expressing ideas in buildings, not words. In this way he was a pragmatist, as American as John Dewey or Henry David Thoreau. By celebrating the modern condition without rejecting humanism, he accepted the difficult predicament of any contemporary designer. The son of an ardent Quaker who advocated equality and individual self-worth, he and his firm were committed to improving the lives of their ultimate clients, building users. He never bridled at being called a pop(ulist) architect.
Today it’s disheartening to see a fine building like the La Jolla Museum of Contemp under threat of destruction to make way for second-rate expansion. The great VRSB buildings are well-established landmarks of modern American design: the Vanna Venturi House, Guild House, Franklin Court Museum, Oberlin Art Museum, Gordon Wu Hall, the Sainsbury Wing.  Not many were constructed after 1990.
Alas, during the final three decades of his career, Venturi accepted honors and awards for his early work but found few champions among contemporary critics or in the academy. That was an unfortunate consequence of history, though I believe history will look more positively on his work in the decades to come.  He lived during a challenging period, accepting all of its problems and contradictions with good humor and grace. Arguing always for designs that found a middle ground, a difficult whole, he was an architect perfectly in tune with his time and place: Philadelphia, the United States, the twentieth century.


Vanna Venturi House. ImageCourtesy of WIkimedia