10
NECESSARY ARCHITECTURE
Headquarters Building, North PennVisiting Nurse Association 1960, Ambler, Pennsylvania. Venturi and Short
The studio started in Philadelphia. The first weeks were dedicated to portray the complexities and contradictions present in traces of early Venturi. In the North Penn Visiting Nurse Association, Venturi deals with a “box” not through spatial continuities but through circumstancial distortions. The building appears
to be put together by a series of paper-thin independent facades. The fragility of these “cardboard” walls contrasts with the pretended monumentality of the piano-nobile scaled windows. The big windows also plays a contrast with the small openings of the storage room in the groundlevel