Robert Venturi | EPFL Graph Search

Robert Charles Venturi est un architecte américain né le à Philadelphie (États-Unis) et mort le dans la même ville. Il est considéré comme un des précurseurs du postmodernisme. Biographie Après être diplômé à l’université de Princeton en 1947, Robert Venturi y obtient un MFA en 1950. Il poursuit ses études de 1954 à 1956 à l’American Academy in Rome où il a obtenu une bourse et où il tombe sous l'influence du maniérisme et du baroque. Il collabore avec Eero Saarinen et Louis Kahn avant d’ouvrir sa propre agence en 1958. En 1964, il s’associe avec John Rauch et quelques années plus tard son épouse Denise Scott Brown, elle-même architecte, rejoint l’agence. Après le départ de John Rauch en 1989, l'agence a pris le nom de Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates. Il a obtenu le prestigieux prix Pritzker en 1991. Il a enseigné dans de nombreuses universités (Yale, Princeton, Harvard, UCLA). Il a construit de nombreux édifices mais c’est surtout son œuvre théorique qui a eu une

Architecture without Content 6: Without Venturi

Kersten Geers

Robert Venturi is probably architecture's best-known hero for the wrong reason. Extremely successful at a young age as the iconoclast of North America's late modernism, he soon came to represent (through his collaboration with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izneour) a specific kind of sociology turned into one-dimensional architecture, forever incarnated in Learning from Las Vegas. The gargantuan success of his second publication somehow dwarfed the monumental achievements of his first (and far more funny) book: Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. Ever devoured by generations as obligatory literature in their education, the reading of this treatise has always been somehow biased by what came afterwards. In many ways the facts of history are always more nuanced and complicated then simple slogans can assess. Still we feel it is important to reactivate again the grammar, vocabulary, methods and insights that are so beautifully presented to us in his seminal work. Taking Venturi's work as a method however, would account for a gigantic mistake, as it would not be truthful to the very core of his practice: to suggest without claiming, and to claim without consequence (something he sadly forgot in later times). For that reason this Venturi studio in Tokyo is (and was) 'Without Venturi'. In an attempt to take his work afresh, we should not theorise it too much, we should appropriate it with a certain naiveté. The workshop we organised did exactly that: take a Venturi project, appropriate it, transform it, replace it. This simple method of dumb transformation allowed us to think about language and principles, without the bias of interpretation. The interpretation came later. 'Without Venturi' came about because Yoshi Tsukamoto invited us to do a workshop at Tokyo Tech, an invitation we took with much pleasure and engagement. From the very beginning, it was clear to us that the Tokyo of Bow Wow, Sakamoto and Shinohara was the perfect spot to investigate the rather naive hunch on Venturi we caress for some time now. Perhaps the work of these three architects is the best example of the possible success of false interpretation, appropriation and indirect inspiration. In a conversation we had the luck to have with Sakamoto-sensei, he confessed of being at a certain point, very inspired by the 'images' and the 'image sequence' of the Complexity book. Untranslated and to a certain extent, obscure, the visual poetry and probably the visual argument found its way into the very idiosyncratic and beautiful work of the Japanese master. Without Venturi is for that reason very much tribute to this work, to architects that took formal risks more or less inspired by it, or more often just out of the blue. We feel this is the fundamental lesson of Venturi's legacy, as it brings us back to a radical method of formal accumulation that does not fall short because of its ideological bandwidth, but is able to embrace the complexity of the world without sacrificing its own inner consistency

2014

Chlorosulfonic acid

Albert Renken

High-purity HSO3Cl is prepd. at a high space-time yield by mixing and reacting gaseous HCl with SO3 dissolved in ClSO3H, contg. 0.3-1.4% SO3 at 70-100 Deg in a venturi tube at 1-1.1 mol HCl/mol SO3. Thus, into the throat of a vertical venturi tube was fed gaseous HCl at 520 L/h and a rising stream of a soln. of SO3 in HSO3Cl. The reaction mixt. at 80 Deg then passed into the bubble column above the venturi where the reaction was completed, excess HCl being discharged at the top of the column, and HSO3Cl withdrawn through a side outlet and cooled. The product was collected at an outlet at 2.9 kg/h. The remaining CSO3Cl was recycled to the venturi reactor after the addn. of 1.05 L SO3/h. [on SciFinder (R)]

(Hoechst A.-G., Fed. Rep. Ger.).1979

Architecture without Content 6: Without Venturi

Kersten Geers

2014