VERSO UNA COMPLESSITÀ. Teoria e rappresentazione in Le Corbusier e Robert Venturi

In 1966 the MoMA (Museum of Modern Arts), in collaboration with the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Chicago, published for the first time the book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by Robert Venturi. In the introduction, the historian Vincent Scully resolutely defines the book as the most important work on how to make architecture after the book Vers une Architecture by Le Corbusier in 1923. Scully also clarifies how deeply Venturi’s training and ideas were influenced by a deep knowledge of the literature and the architecture of the Swiss architect. Nonetheless, his theories appear to be opposite to those of Le Corbusier. In fact, to the noble purism of individual buildings and the city as a whole, Venturi responds instead by accepting the contradictions and complexity of urban experience at all levels. But Vers une Architecture and Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture are both works realised by architects who truly learnt from the architectures of the past. This concept immediately transpires from the pages of the two books, which, as Scully points out, are complementary to each other and essentially very similar. Indeed, the two architects share a comprehensive and participatory knowledge of their own Time, as well as of the ancient world; this awareness of the Present Time and its ongoing needs and mutations has made them capable of Translating and Transforming experiences into architectural work. Starting from this reflection, the presented contribution realises a double path of an analysis of the cited texts, aiming to highlight the similarities in the process of elaboration, and communication of architectural theory of one of each. Ultimately, the work we propose is an attempt to reread the architectural thought of the two authors. The research follows the traces of what in their respective books constitutes the immaterial dialogue between images and words, even more precisely between gesture and word, that each of them has made to organize, write and conceive their book.