Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture - 1. Nonstraightforward Architecture: A Gentle Manifesto - 9. The Inside and the Outside by Robert Venturi Summary by Gustav Kjær Vad Nielsen An advocation for a complexity and contradictory in architecture. A distinction between inside and outside, top and bottom as well as an appreciation and willing to exploration of the transitions between the aforementioned and their associated spatials. A view that applies to individual buildings as well as whole cities. This thought is counteracted by the Modern Architecture led by architects such as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe who are against the ‘false front’ and thereby practice a universal and ‘honest’ architecture that reveals its interior on the exterior, while contextual relations are not present - “plop architecture”(p86). Venturi makes use of many examples to explain the unfulfilled potentials of especially the “detached lining” which leaves space between the dominant inner spaces and the outside space; the residual space(p80). Wether architecture should evolve from inside-out og outside-in is discussed from a stand that the inside and outside have contradictory spatial needs. Thus, the need for a duality in the design proces is justified:
Behind the facade the church was designed from the inside out, but in front it was designed from the outside in(p85).
The statement that architecture might reveals a lot more when the tension between inside and outside is considered a program for further examination rather than being avoided, concludes Venturi’s writing(p86).
Venturi, R. 1966, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, MOMA, New York