Robert Venturi's book Complexity and Contradiction was a response to the sense of de-humanisation engulfing modern architecture. Disdained by modernist architects following its publication in 1966 it was ridiculed as an architectural understanding that disregarded the modernist style of the high art movement. Venturi released a further book with his wife Denise Scott Brown titled Learning from Las Vegas which outlines a language to understand post-modern architecture. Just as Venturi looked to Las Vegas, Rem Koolhaas ventured to New York where he formulated his own findings of how architecture has responded to popular culture with his book Delirious New York. Koolhaas accepted an invitation in 2002 to submit an entry for the Chinese Central Television headquarters at Beijing. Koolhaas proclaimed China was the "biggest story" of the twenty first century so far in an article with Dickey (2012, p. 46-51). Venturi's approach can be seen to have attracted Koolhaas to China because it exhibits a largely new urban approach just as Las Vegas once posed when Venturi first studied the city. Both architects are captivated by popular culture because they believe more meaningful resolutions can be formed when they are designed using the social structure they will fit into. Both Venturi and Koolhaas look to popular culture rather than high art because they both believe architecture should respond to both client and the social identity of its context. Venturi (1966, p.41) stated he looked to Las Vegas "to acknowledge the relevance and significance of the automobile city." Significantly this provided an insight to how the city worked for the modern man behind the wheel of his automobile. This methodology to decipher the relationship between people and place also forms the conceptual basis for the CCTV building. Koolhaas studied China extensively recognising the project as a unique opportunity to work with different people from a usually secretive nation possessing unique values. Koolhaas (CCTV - Headquarters, 2017, para.1) aimed to create "an alternative to the exhausted typology of the skyscraper" because he found the "Chinese have an enormous obsession with stability" (Dickey, 2012, p. 46-51). This prompted
a subversive response from Koolhaas who felt a new form that "introduces an experience of what creativity means" would be most appropriate. This concept shows Koolhaas unlike Venturi has gone beyond studying the interaction between architecture and its inhabitants. Instead Koolhaas looks towards popular social attitudes to formulate an architectural response. The people of Beijing were driven by a rigorous daily routine where productivity and efficiency were prioritised over creativity and idleness. Koolhaas wished to subvert the stability by diversifying their everyday experience and broadening their horizons concerning the possibilities of architecture. Both architects learn structural typologies and break them to evoke new meaning. Venturi's Vanna house was composed referring to the classical rules of symmetry which contrast with the Pennsylvanian vernacular home they were applied to. [Figure 1] Venturi (1966, p.119) describes it as "a little house with big scale" which achieves "tension rather than nervousness." This can be understood by Venturi's principle quest "for richness of meaning rather than clarity of meaning" (Venturi, 1966, p.16). The grand scale of the internal elements subverts their typical symmetrical composition when applied to a small-scale structure such as Vanna House. This creates a state of antithesis between the old and current rules of architecture which conjures Venturi's richness of meaning. Correspondingly Koolhaas modifies the steel skeletal system dressed with glass that forms the basis of the skyscraper typology originating from Mies Van der Rohe's Seagram building [Figure 2]. Koolhaas declares the facade of the CCTV "a visual manifestation of the building's structure" (CCTV - Headquarters, 2017, para. 3) The network of triangulated steel tubes "instead of forming a regular pattern of diamonds, become dense in areas of greater stress, looser and more open in areas requiring less support." [Figure 3] The CCTV building follows the structural conventions of the skyscraper typology continued on page 6 