Charles Holland

University for the Creative Arts (UCA), Canterbury, United Kingdom
charles@charleshollandarchitects.co.uk

I’ll Be Your Mirror: Criticality and Contextualism in The Work of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

In 1970, the architecture firm of Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown designed a pair of houses on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. The houses were for two families – the Trubeks and the Wislockis – and they were similar in size, material and form. Despite these
similarities, there were several critical differences between them. In Venturi and Scott Brown’s own words, while the Trubek house was ‘complex and contradictory’ the Wislocki house was ‘ugly and ordinary. They were, in effect, non-identical twins. The critic Vincent Scully has described the Trubek and Wislocki houses as relating not just to each other but the entire tradition of Nantucket with “every variety of old and new shingled house from 1973 to 1686 to be found not far away.”2 This close attention to context was typical of Venturi and Scott Brown’s approach, a married couple as well as a working partnership.
So, this pair of houses were designed by a pair of architects for a pair of families to mirror each other as well as the houses around them.
Venturi and Scott Brown’s work offers a critical role for contextualism. This essay will explore the use of mirroring in the work of Venturi and Scott Brown. It will examine the concept of originality, the idea of the copy and the use of reflection, parody and mimicry in their buildings and writing. It will also consider the working and personal relationship of Venturi and Scott Brown and the mirroring of their own interests and approaches.

Keywords: Robert Venturi; Denise Scott Brown; context; mirrors; copies; Dan Graham; art; conceptual art.