Venturi, Robert

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Venturi, Robert (1925– ) US architect. He argued that architectural modernism was banal. Venturi's stress on the importance of ‘vernacular’ or contextual architecture heralded post-modernism. His publications include Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966), and Learning from Las Vegas (1972), whose consumer architecture is contrasted with the post-modern approach. His buildings include Gordon Wu Hall, Princeton University, USA (1984), and the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, London, UK (1991).

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