MOTHER'S HOUSE. Here is a house the architectural historian, Vincent Scully, referred to as ' the biggest small building of the second half of the twentieth century.'

As an example of Modern architecture of the 1960s it was unusual as a building whose aesthetic engaged symbolism as well as abstraction: it was Modern but it also looked like a traditional house with a sloping roof, traditional/actual windows in its facades, and explicit elements of ornament on its surfaces. And then its walls were green  rather than white! And through the openings of its exterior walls, like those of the Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier of 1928, you could see complex elements so it was simple outside and complex inside: it was designed from the outside in as well as the inside out. All this could add up to an architecture that is Mannerist via its complexity and contradictions  an approach again unusual in the Modernist mid-century. So it is Modern and Mannerist. It looks like a house! It was designed also to contain the more or less traditional furniture of Vanna Venturi.

She loved it and she loved sharing it with the many visitors from all over who would come to see it.

Robert C. Venturi
Principal, Venturi Scott Brown & Associates

Index to MODERN HOMES PHILADELPHIA History Pages