50th Anniversary of Robert Venturi's "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture"

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Charles Robert Venturi

Charles Robert Venturi, Jr. (born June 25th, 1925) is an American architect, principal founder of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the leading figures of twentieth century architecture. Along with his wife and partner, Denise Scott Brown, he helped shape the way architects, planners and students experience and think about architecture and the american built environment. Its buildings, urban planning, theoretical and didactic writings have also contributed to the expansion of the discourse on architecture. He wrote in 1972 in collaboration with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour "Learning from Las Vegas: the forgotten symbolism of architectural form", one of the most influential books on architecture in the second half of the twentieth century.

Venturi was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1991; the prize was awarded to him alone, despite a request to include his partner Denise Scott Brown. Fifteen years later, both jointly were awarded the AIA Gold Medal 2016, the most important architecture prize in the US. Venturi is also known for coining the slogan "Less is a bore", a post-modern antidote to the famous modernist Mies van der Rohe sentence "Less is more". He reached prestige when in the 1960s he began criticizing the orthodoxy of the modern movement, which led to the postmodernism of the 1970s His cause advocated a complex architecture and accepted its contradictions. He rejected the austerity of the modern movement and encouraged the return of historicism, added decoration and of a resounding symbolism in architectural design.

Denise Scott Brown

Denise Scott Brown, (born as Denise Lakofski) (Nkana, Rhodesia, October 3rd 1931) is a postmodern architect, urbanist, writer and teacher. Expert in urban and educational planning at universities such as Berkeley, Yale and Harvard, she wrote in 1972 in collaboration with Robert Venturi and Steven Izenour Learning from Las Vegas: the forgotten symbolism of architectural form, one of the most influential books in architecture in the second half of the twentieth century. It is considered the most famous woman architect of the second half of the twentieth century. She married Robert Venturi in 1967 and they have worked together since 1969, but in 1991 she was excluded from the Pritzker Prize prompting protests and debates about the difficulties of women architects to be recognized in their profession. Finally, they were awarded jointly with the AIA Gold Medal 2016 becoming the second woman in history to win the most prestigious award in the world of architecture and the first living woman to receive this galardón. She is a member of the architectural Studio Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates of Philadelphia (USA), which in 2012, following the retirement of Venturi, became VSBA Architects & Planners.

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