This peculiar building is located in the heart of Ambler. No one knew about this building, but we do know about the architect who designed it. Learn below who he was and his architectural philosophy.
Who was Robert Venturi?
Robert Charles Venturi, Jr. (1925-2018) was born in Philadelphia and the only child to Quaker parents. He attended Princeton University where he was introduced to modernism in architecture. After graduating with both undergraduate and graduate degrees, he began to work for modernist architects Eero Saarinen and Louis Kahn.
After studying abroad in Europe, he became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania where he met his wife Denise Scott Brown. In 1960, he went into private practice first with William H. Short and then with John Rauch. His wife Denise joined their firm as the planner. In 1989, John Rauch resigned from the firm, leaving Robert with Denise, establishing the firm name, Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates (now the VSBA Architects & Planners).
Two of his most well-known buildings in the Philadelphia area were the Vanna Venturi House and the Guild House. These two buildings were built based on Venturi's manifesto, Complexity and Contradiction where he discussed about being more "diverse" in modern architecture instead of designing oversimplified, "black-and-white" buildings.
The most well-known collaboration between Robert and Denise was their work on the Las Vegas strip that lead to their 1972 book titled, Learning From Las Vegas with Steven Izenour. In the book, they focused more on the appreciation of the strip that was designed for the "common" people rather than designing buildings that were "monumental" or "heroic." Symbolism was the most valuable lesson from the Vegas strip visit.
"Recognizing symbolism once again as a necessary function of architecture; connecting communication with community; showing that you can be just as functional about symbolism as about any other aspect of architecture – these were important contributions. And only the Las Vegas of then could teach the lesson of signs in vast space. That’s all gone today."
- Denise Scott Brown from 2010 Interview with Adam Marcus
North Penn Visiting Nurses Association
The North Penn Visiting Nurses headquarters was built in 1961 on Race Street in Ambler, PA. It was the first building Robert Venturi designed and loved. He was sadden to find out that the owner of the building in 1993 made renovations without respecting the original quality of it. Ever since finding out about this, he decided to move towards historic preservation to prevent any of his buildings from being modified.
He described this building as "demolished" when asked which unbuilt project he wished it would've been built. He used the word "demolished" as a way to describe the renovations done on the North Penn Visiting Nurses headquarters.
Fortunately, the building still stands to this day.
"I love this, my first built building, and I feel it has genuine artistic and historical significance--despite its modest size--involving elements that now seem everyday, because of their subsequent influence on architecture of our time, but were original then. I refer to the use of ornament, abstract and symbolic, in the redundant juxtaposed ornament over the entrance opening, as well as the hierarchical scale of this opening in relation to the scale of the windows and to the molded borders around the windows in the front: at the time a dear architect-friend put his arm over my shoulder and said 'Bob, you never decoratively border windows.' and ten years later he did it himself. But especially new was the overall shape of the building with its particular angles that makes of it a fragment as well as a whole as it inflects, by means of its angled shape, toward the parking court--thereby making the parking lot a positive element in the composition as a whole."
- Robert Venturi, Iconography and Electronics upon a Generic Architecture
Fun Fact #1: Fellow architect Louis Kahn designed homes in Montgomery County that are still standing. Check them out here!
Bibliography
"1963." Quondam. Accessed August 18, 2022. https://www.quondam.com/19/1963.htm.
Bernstein, Fred A. "Robert Venturi, Architect Who Rejected Modernism, Dies at 93." New York Times. Last modified September 19, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/obituaries/robert-venturi-dead.html.
"DENISE SCOTT BROWN & ROBERT VENTURI: Interview by Adam Marcus." Museo Magazine. 2010. http://museomagazine.com/SCOTT-BROWN-VENTURI.
Lempieri, Jason. "Venturi’s Guild House: 50 Years Of Everyday Extraordinary Design." Hidden City Philadelphia. Last modified July 29, 2013. https://hiddencityphila.org/2013/07/venturis-guild-house-50-years-of-everyday-extraordinary-design/.
"North Penn Visiting Nurses Association Headquarters Building." ideeworks. Accessed August 18, 2022. https://www.idee-works.com/rescue.
Perez, Adelyn. "AD Classics: Vanna Venturi House / Robert Venturi." ArchDaily. Last modified June 2, 2010. https://www.archdaily.com/62743/ad-classics-vanna-venturi-house-robert-venturi.
"Robert Venturi (1925-2018)." iDesignWiki (blog). September 23, 2019. https://www.idesign.wiki/en/tag/fire-station-4/.
"Venturi & Short – North Penn Visiting Nurses Association." Téchne - Architectural Juxtaposition. Accessed August 28, 2022. https://texnh.tumblr.com/post/117503409151/venturi-scott-brown-visiting-nurses-association.
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