Yunus
Almarfadi
HISTORY
The design of "Mother's House", as architect Robert Venturi frequently calls the house, was affected by Vanna (née Luizi) Venturi as both the client whose needs had to be met, and also as the mother who helped develop the architect's talent and personality.Vanna was a feminist, socialist, pacifist and vegetarian with an active intellectual life, reading books mostly on history, current events, and biography. She was born to Italian immigrant parents in Philadelphia in 1893. She dropped out of high school because her family could not afford to buy her a coat, so she was essentially self-educated. She did not marry until relatively late in life in 1924, marrying a fruit and produce merchant, Robert Venturi, Sr. Her only child, Robert, Jr. was born in 1925.
VILLA MAREA
The Vanna Venturi House, one of the first prominent works of the postmodern architecture movement, is located in the neighborhood of Chestnut Hill inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania. It was designed by architect Robert Venturi for his mother Vanna Venturi, and constructed between 1962 -1964.[1] The house was sold in 1973 and remains a private residence.The five room house stands only about 30 feet (9 m) tall at the top of the chimney, but has a monumental front facade, an effect achieved by intentionally manipulating the architectural elements that indicate a building's scale.[2] A non-structural applique arch and "hole in the wall" windows, among other elements, together with Venturi's book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture were an open challenge to Modernist orthodoxy. Architectural historian Vincent Scully called it "the biggest small building of the second half of the twentieth century.
© 2023 by YUNUS ALMARFADI.