Venturi, Rauch & Scott Brown: Buildings and Projects

New York: Rizzoli, 1987. Softbound. VG- (overall light shelf wear to wraps, light wear and foxing to block edges, pages are clean). Color pictorial wraps. 336 pp., profusely illustrated in bw and color. Robert Venturi, partner of the Philadelphia firm of Venturi, Rauch, and Scott Brown, is probably best known for his writing on architecture. Published during a time of growing discontent with modern architecture, Venturi's and Denise Scott Brown's writings helped to redefine architectural design by emphasizing issues like history, language, form, symbolism, and the dialectics of high and popular art. In their architectural projects Venturi and his partners have refined a clear design vocabulary through ordinary and conventional building techniques. This was demonstrated early on in the controversial Guild House, and has been artfully expressed in the more recent critically acclaimed Gordon Wu Hall, the Microbiology building at Princeton University, and in the yet-to-be-built extension to the National Gallery in London. Von Moos's text, amply illustrated, meticulously describes and catalogues the firm's evolution and work. This book should provide a valuable reference to the work of a uniquely American firm. -- from book flap.